The Spire

Ashwin Prabaharan ’26

Co-Editor-in-Chief

For 2 years now, I have served as a Resident Assistant (RA) to freshman students here at Holy Cross. From the first day of RA orientation, Holy Cross extols the idea that we are an extended family to help us cultivate a sense of service and community for our dorms. We’re taught many protocols on how to handle our hallways. However, we fail to prepare for the most relevant attributes of Holy Cross students: their capacity for disrespect and arrogance.

You do not need to look in high places for evidence of this, just pass by Easy Street in the morning after a Friday or Saturday night. The grass patches and dorm entrances are riddled with empty cans, takeout waste, and other refuse. In the dorms, ceiling tiles are punched out and left strewn on sticky, beer-doused floors. Bathroom stall doors are ripped off and tossed aside. Shower curtains are removed, and the floors are covered in vomit or garbage. Door decorations and bulletin boards, installed by RAs who spent hours working on them during the summer, are ripped off and thrown onto the floor. This is the reality of our campus environment that RAs and custodial staff must endure, every weekend without fail. More importantly, this is the environment students live in and experience, and no parent would contend this is suitable living for any of their children. 

The next-day reality of weekend outings is simply the tip of the iceberg. In addition to my personal experiences, I have heard firsthand from fellow RAs and other staff about the capacity for entitlement possessed by Holy Cross underclassmen. One RA recalls a party held in the hallway of their floor wherein the students placed a large speaker and ping-pong table laden with alcohol directly in front of their room door, obstructing the RA’s ability to leave their own room. In a freshman dorm, another RA on their night duty shift had knocked on a student’s door to ask them to lower their music’s volume to respect their neighbors so late in the evening. In response, the students slammed the door in the RA’s face while audibly questioning and taunting, with curses, their right to ask them to turn down their music. Another RA noted they saw a custodian crying from the sheer disgust of the debris with which they were tasked to clean. In one of the most vile displays of apathy towards our community, a freshman dorm was covered in racial slurs, while one student burned the pride flag. In response, the RAs were subjected to a two-hour session to learn about our personalities and personal experiences. Not one word offered support on how to tackle the incidents and prevent further recurrences. 

The stories do not end, yet Holy Cross as a community fails to hold itself accountable for the manner in which the environment, staff and its students are treated. RAs are taught to take action against residents who engage in underage drinking and other disruptive activities in the hallways, yet the offenses do not end. After being reported, students face disciplinary action akin to a slap on the wrist, with no forceful punishment that compels them to change their behavior. Dorms continue to experience the same degree of chaos as the week before because students do not feel a need to reform. In turn, RAs feel less secure in their capacity to maintain a stable environment for their students. It is a vicious cycle that permeates this campus’s ability to function effectively as a learning community that respects individual experiences and spaces. 

This is only exacerbated by Holy Cross’s unwillingness to seriously tackle misbehavior and meaningfully support its student RA staff. Unlike other schools, RAs are not paid or guaranteed other benefits aside from free housing and partial coverage of food plans. This speaks to the school’s unwillingness to recognize the work and efforts of RAs, most likely because RAs are seen as expendable and easily replaceable given the lure of free housing. In turn, you get demoralized and overworked RAs tasked with the school’s most proximate level of student work.

Our attention must necessarily then turn to the cause of this behavior. I find fault in how Holy Cross interacts with its student body at the most basic levels. Students are not treated as the adults they ought to be treated as, which infantilizes and lowers our expectations for them. RAs are mandated to conduct CrusaderChats, or conversations with each of their residents 3 times a semester and document each one for an internal database. RAs are also expected to create creative door decorations. Aesthetic judgements aside, these activities are reminiscent of a daycare program. Holy Cross is of the opinion that students cannot be expected to act professionally and manage their personal lives. This is best demonstrated in the lack of actual punishment students receive if they violate community guidelines. It is no wonder we continue to see the same type of behavior because if they were effective, students would be actually disincentivized from behaving as such. One RA notes that their floor residents have been handed disciplinary measures over and over for alcohol and other offenses, but the behaviour continues because the “punishment” does not punish. Students experience Holy Cross without the jarring realization that they are now solely responsible for their actions and will be held to account for them because we do not set it as an expectation. Personal accountability is not a value effectively communicated with the student body. Other than a chat with residential staff or probation, nothing disincentivizes mistreatment of one’s dorm area or the campus. 

If we are to address how students treat our campus, we must reform their expectations of what will be tolerated, enforce stiffer penalties, and truly enable the RA staff to help students cultivate this critical connection with their physical surroundings. Entitlement cannot be allowed to cloud students’ judgements and excuse their behaviour. College or residence hall probation must be compounded with a tangible action that requires students to reflect on their behaviour, not just a paper warning. Freshmen orientation should emphasize that we have a collective responsibility to others, to maintain a functioning dorm environment and respect our neighbors’ space. 

We owe it to one another, to the RA staff, to help develop character imbued with civility and respect. “For and with others” drives the Holy Cross mission, but the reality is very different from what we aim to achieve. By expecting better of each other as friends and neighbors on this campus, we can ensure every student enjoys their time here on Mount Saint James, and leaves it a better place for years to come. 

Featured image courtesy of the College of the Holy Cross Instagram