OUR VIEWS Consensus Opinion

The new changes to the structure of the Housing heirarchy announced earlier this week signal a new era for the department-one in which professionals with at least bachelor’s degrees will constitute a larger percentage of its staff.

These changes were the result of a comprehensive review led by Auxiliary Services; groups including faculty, staff, students and professionals outside of Tech examined the existing practices and how to improve them. Although it was good that students were even included in the review, many more should have been consulted; a large portion of these students should have been staff members of the Housing program. With their familiarity with the beneficial and detrimental aspects of the inner workings of Housing, student staff opinions would have been relevant, insightful and, for the most part, accurate.

The choice of review board members notwithstanding, Auxiliary Services must be applauded for its efforts in continually re-evaluating its programs to ensure their pertinance and effectiveness. It must be questioned, though, what the exact goal of these latest changes were-to improve Freshman Experience (FE) or to create more professional positions.

If the goal is to improve FE, then these changes may not have their intended effect. Granted, a certain number of excellent and dedicated peer leaders (PLs) do their job because they love it, not for the perks. For the rest of the moderately successful PLs, the incentives and chances to move up the heirarchy make the difference between wanting to stay on campus for another year in a freshman dorm and moving off campus. Eliminating the entire incentive program of moving up the Housing ladder to better positions including better rooms will turn away many qualified, good PLs who need compensation to make them willing to push aside some of their school work and other friends in favor of Housing responsibilities. Furthermore, the new 12 week class that PLs will have to take starting next fall will create an even bigger deterrent to qualified students applying for positions.

If, on the other hand, the goal of the changes is to create more professional positions within the Department of Housing, then the restructuring will most likely be successful. Since Housing is a typical starting ground for people with aspirations of eventually moving up into Student Affairs, then having more professionals in the department will give these new hires better job-growth opporutnities. But if this was the true goal of the reorganization, then it should have been clearly stated, instead of the modifications being ushered in under the auspices of improving the FE program.