The fall semester is well underway, and Northeastern students are settling into the rhythm of campus life. With clubs and other activities filling with new students, a new semester also brings a newly elected hall council for residence halls.

Hall council is a student-run organization that takes place in every residence hall on campus. Students vote for members of their hall council with an online ballot, electing their hall members to fill the roles of president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and advocacy representative. 

Once elected, leaders of hall council are responsible for hosting events in their residence halls as a way of engaging the community and bringing residents of each living space closer together. 

Lindsey Parcell, a second-year nursing major, is president of West Village C and West Village F’s hall council. She said it will be her second year serving on hall council. 

As a freshman, Parcell was hall council president of the East Village, Hastings and Midtown Hotel community. Since it was her first leadership position in college, Parcell said it was a challenge to serve all three residence halls, ensuring each was effectively heard. 

“It was kind of crucial last year for hall council to make sure that everyone feels included on campus and that Hastings and Midtown Hotel still got the announcements and event notices that East Village did as well,” said Parcell. 

In addition to serving the student body, Parcell said she also tried to organize initiatives off-campus, hosting events to raise money for local homeless shelters and food banks. “We tried to ensure that some social organization was being donated to or helped in some way,” she said. 

Ryan Hart, a second-year mechanical engineering major, ran alongside Parcell this year as vice president. “I was really just looking for a way to get involved and do something that could help out the community,” he said. “This seemed like a really hands-on opportunity.”

Second-year Ishani Kapoor, secretary of West Village C and F, said she ran for a leadership position that would allow her to get more involved on campus. 

“My first year, I wanted to figure out what fit me best,” said Kapoor, a computer science and game development combined major. “This year I decided on hall council.” 

While hall council is just beginning their weekly meetings, Parcell said she hopes to host more events with Northeastern’s Resident Student Association, or RSA, this year. “That gives us bigger budgets and more people to come to events, typically,” she said.

RSA plays a similar role as hall council, though on a larger scale. The association serves students in residence halls on campus, acting as a liaison between the Department of Housing and Residential Life, according to their website. 

RSA is also responsible for overseeing every hall council. Liam Gordon, a third-year chemical engineering major, is RSA’s vice president for advocacy and one of the co-chairs for hall council. “What RSA’s biggest role is in hall council is assembling them,” he said.

RSA plays a major part in the elections of hall council members, working with senior resident assistants, or SRA’s, in residence halls to decide how they are elected into their roles. Once they are elected and trained by RSA, the SRA’s of each residence hall act as their advisors for the year. 

“We’re the ones who set it up, but more throughout the year it’s kind of just overseeing them,” Gordon said.

Gordon said that overall, it’s up to hall council to decide how active they are within their resident community. While the RSA sets guidelines for hall councils, like the requirement of one event per month, any proposed changes within their hall depends on how motivated they are to enact it. 

In terms of how RSA communicates with hall councils on campus, Annie Lancos, vice president of operations in RSA, says there is always room for improvement. 

“One of our goals this year is trying to make them feel more integrated into the RSA community,” said Lancos, a second-year biochemistry major. “We also want them to feel like they have our say as a resource if they need it.”

A common trend RSA has noticed in hall council is that there are fewer upperclassmen that choose to run each year. “Some people are less inclined to get involved in new things because they are already very much involved,” Gordon said.

Although elections have just recently been completed for hall council, Gordon said the elected members seem excited for the year ahead. “A lot of them seem really passionate about making change, not just in their own residence halls, but on campus at large.”