This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “What is the future of the RD position and role?”
Guest Post by Maria J. Matta Moreno, Residence Life Professional
When discussing the future of the Resident Director (RD) role, we also need to consider how the RD role has changed and developed throughout the years and where it has been. Since March 2020 when COVID-19 shut down our institutions, it shed light on the several ways higher education was severely unprepared for such a difficult crisis and highlighted who was considered essential staff. Those of us in residence life have always served as essential staff, managing crisis response daily, but this level of response propelled the RD role to a different level of what it means to work in residence life.
The pandemic turned the RD role into a unique temporary healthcare profession. Some institutions required RD’s to work in person starting in Fall 2020, asking them to uphold mask mandates and other COVID policies. They were asked to transport students to isolation buildings, to make sure they were isolating as directed and were even asked to deliver food and water to those students as part of their on-call responsibilities. All the while, if these policies weren’t being followed, they were also asked to hold students accountable through the conduct process. RD’s had to be caregivers, counselors, delivery personnel, and a voice of authority all while still trying to manage all other responsibilities that came with the role during a time were everything was virtual and difficult to navigate.
While the responsibilities the resident directors took during this time were a symptom of capitalism in higher education, these tasks not only put RD’s health at risk but also uncovered a plethora of questions; What IS the role of the RD? Are RD’s always expected to serve as essential personnel when unprecedented times occur? Where is the line drawn for “other duties as assigned”? Or is the role simply reversing back to more of an in-loco parentis way of doing the work?
Many of us who decided to go into this work did so because we consider this role to be a holistic student affairs experience where we get to dip our toes into most functional areas. We get to help students develop through the RA role, through the conduct process, through 1:1 interactions, and through community building. We get to help students when they are struggling with academics, with their mental health, and when they are making questionable decisions like blacking out drunk. These tasks and situations offer us the opportunity to educate students outside of the classroom, to teach them how to manage conflict, how to ask for help, how to find resources, and even how to do laundry. Education happens in the halls every day with residents learning how to live with one another in diverse communities, and RD’s are a big part of that learning.
Several institutions take the educator RD role to a different level with RA courses where RD’s get to train RA’s on all the things they need to know to serve students. RA’s learn about identity, mental health, resources, and crisis response amongst other things. Further, RD’s are now also implementing residential curriculum, which looks to formalize this education a bit more, not only for our RA’s but also for our students. While students might think they only come to college to learn from their professors in a classroom, there is a lot more learning that also happens outside of the classroom. So when thinking about the future of the RD role, it is evident that this is the direction it is going. The more schools that implement a residential curriculum the more formalized RD’s will be as educators outside the classroom, so long as they’re not asked to be temporary healthcare providers again.
