Carolina Housing staff and RAs prepare for Thanksgiving

As class obligations wind down and students head home for Thanksgiving, a few resident advisors and community directors are staying later to ensure that students staying for the break remain safe.

Associate Director of Carolina Housing Rick Bradley said before they decided to stay open for Fall Break about eight to 10 years ago, the residence halls closed for every break.

But as the University attracted more international and out-of-state students, more and more students wanted to stay in their dorms during the breaks.

To cater to these students, in 2016, Carolina Housing decided to stay open during every break with the exception of winter break.

“That’s the primary rationale to be able to serve either international or out-of-state students or students that are in-state that might have internships or other reasons why they need to stay,” Bradley said.

Bradley said the RAs in Granville Towers and Ram Village, along with two community directors, are on-call during breaks and responsible for rounds, as well as overall student needs.

“They (the RAs) go on rounds through those buildings — through all of our buildings where students are opting to stay,” Bradley said. “Oftentimes, they’ll go check on those students but continue to do the same amount of rounds that they would in their normal routine in their community only, except they do it for all the communities.”

Despite the fact that they might not need to stay for the entire Thanksgiving break, the RAs in Carmichael Residence Hall have to either stay a day later or come back earlier depending on their preferences.

Joshua Pontillo, an RA in Carmichael, said rather than going home on Tuesday for Thanksgiving break, he will be going home on Wednesday instead. He said it’s not a big problem for him because although two RAs will be on duty, he only has to be present.

“It’s just kind of part of the job, I don’t really mind it,” Pontillo said. “It’s just something you go in knowing that you’ll probably have to do.”

Although most people leave campus when classes end and the break officially begins, Bradley said the RAs stay to handle any possible last-minute issues.

“We would never have all of our RAs leave before the students leave,” he said.

Pontillo said he does have to stay on campus at times when there are not a lot of students around such as breaks and summer training, but he said he’s not usually lonely.

“Even then, we’re with staff most of the time, so even that’s not lonely,” he said. “You still have your fellow staff members to hang out with.”

Kayla Cook, a first-year student who lives in Hinton James Residence Hall, said she has experienced first-hand how hard the RAs work, and she appreciates the effort they put into keeping students safe.

“I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that the students really appreciate everything that the RAs do for them, even though we take them for granted,” Cook said. “They do a lot of things that they don’t need to do by staying later, like sacrificing time with their families.”

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