After years of area coordinators making their typical rounds in Fraternity Circle, resident assistants (RAs) will be returning to the fraternity houses starting in fall of 2017.

During an Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC) meeting on Jan. 26, Kristen Sarniak, area coordinator and Greek Life adviser, answered questions for the IFC members and house presidents/vice presidents. 

Kim Lammers, director of residence life, met with the presidents and vice presidents before the open IFC meeting. Although the fraternity presidents were informed in August, residence life met with this year’s new fraternity presidents to talk about the upcoming change. 

“We spoke in all the houses this fall, a lot of questions being asked of us were common questions you might ask an RA,” Lammers said. “My hope is that we can lessen misunderstandings and miscommunications between us and the fraternities.”

Hannah Clayborne, vice president of student affairs, said the last year RAs were in the fraternity houses was 2006, but due to university budget cuts and reallocations, the decision was made to remove RAs from Fraternity Circle.

Clayborne said a trained RA can greatly benefit the students, and help build the community in the fraternity houses.

“I think it’s exciting,” Clayborne said. “There’s a sense that we are finally returning to a service we used to have in the past.”

To help with this transition, residence services has recently created a new Greek Life Coordinating position and are currently in the process of hiring someone to fill this position full-time. 

Fraternities also have an occupancy agreement with Residence Life. According to Lammers, a certain percentage of the house must be filled in order for the fraternity to keep their house.  Each house has a different number of points they have to obtain. If that house misses occupancy for two consecutive semesters, they can be removed from the house.

Adding new RAs will be two points towards the occupancy requirements. 

Some fraternity members do have concerns about the RAs being placed in the houses. Patrick Wallace, senior member of Kappa Sigma, said that all of the fraternities have systems put in place which, in effect, do the same things an RA would do.

 “We have a risk management program, a housing manager, and a strike system,” Wallace said. So, even though it reduces the occupancy points, he believes “RAs in the houses would take away the experience for a potential new member to live there.”

 While the new RAs are going to be non-Greek, Lammers said the fraternities can place RAs at their discretion because of different rituals and other activities they do.

 Phi Delta Theta president Frank Steffen said he did not think the fraternities would have any issues with it. Certain places in the houses are reserved for those activities.

 “We don’t think it’s appropriate to ask someone to leave their room just because we are having ritual. We keep the doors closed, put signs up to let people know there is a ritual going on,” Steffen said. 

Phi Delta Theta is one of the two fraternities that  currently has an RA living in their house as a result of the independent male students placed there during the fall semester, due to the enrollment spike. 

“At first, we were upset, our alumni were upset. It’s about the brotherhood bonding experience. We might have thought having people not part of our house would ‘ruin’ the dynamic we already had in our house,” Steffen said. “But then we realized it wasn’t as big of a deal as we thought it was going to be.”