By Taylor Dobbs, News Staff
No news was good news this week for the more than 150 Resident Assistants (RAs) on campus waiting to find out if they will be fired.
The Department of Housing and Residential Life has handed down few, if any, decisions after a campus-wide audit of RA Husky Card use. ResLife began with an audit of the 14-person staff responsible for the “Fairwood Apartments” on Huntington Avenue, the YMCA, Light Hall and other student housing on St. Stephen Street. Two weeks ago, ResLife fired seven RAs – half of that staff – as a result of their findings. The audit, combined with records of which RAs were scheduled to be on duty on a given night, allowed ResLife officials to determine if RAs were conducting their rounds as required.
ResLife soon expanded the scope of the audit to include every RA on campus. The results of those audits — performed by each staff’s Residence Director (RD) — were due to be turned into ResLife administrators by Wednesday.
“No one really knows what they turned in or what kind of decision’s going to be made,” said one current RA, who asked not to be named, “so we’re all kind of still in limbo.”
Senior Eileen Rice was fired along with six others in the first round of terminations. Fired RAs were informed they could appeal the decision. Rice said six of the seven fired, including herself, appealed. At press time, Rice said, none of them had heard a final decision.
“Long story short,” Rice said, “nothing has changed and I’m still in the same spot.”
Across campus, current RAs said some RDs had met individually with members of their staff about the audits, but there was no word of any additional firings.
Multiple RAs argued last week that the process of the audits and disciplinary action isn’t transparent enough, and that ResLife has done little to address that. Last Thursday, ResLife Director Robert Jose sent a short email in an effort to dispel rumors that he had reversed firing decisions made by Associate Director for Residence Life Brie McCormick and that there would be no consequences based on the outcomes of the campus-wide audits. Multiple RAs said they had never heard those rumors. Jose, in the email, also explicitly told RAs that they shouldn’t respond to requests for comments from The News or The Boston Globe. “All request for comments must be handled by [the university’s communications] office,” he wrote.
Northeastern did not respond to request for comment on this story.
Whatever the outcome, RAs said, the problem is solved; since word of the firings began to spread two weeks ago, RAs say there has been much less delinquency on rounds.
