Southern Adventist University’s Residence Life department fired seven Southern Village resident assistants (RAs) last month because they were not consistently entering their residents’ apartments to conduct proper night checks, according to two of the RAs who were fired.
Logan Cooper, senior finance major, is one of the individuals fired. He and another former RA, who requested anonymity to avoid attention as they move on from the situation, told the Accent that each of the Village’s six male RAs were let go, along with one female RA. Another female RA was suspended, they said. Associate Deans Donene Braithwaite and John Willis confirmed that seven Village RA positions opened in mid-September.
Cooper told the Accent that all the RAs who were terminated had to leave Southern Village and move into campus dormitories. He said he and two other former RAs appealed to the deans and Dennis Negrón, vice president for Student Development, to stay in Village, but their appeal was denied.
When they spoke with the Accent, Cooper and the other former RA expressed feeling unvalued and confused by what they described as inadequate communication during the firing process.
The Accent contacted Administrative Dean Lisa Patterson and Negrón about the situation; both responded that they cannot comment.
“Student issues are confidential,” Patterson wrote in an email to the Accent.
Braithwaite and Willis also told the Accent they cannot comment on what led to the seven RA positions opening up.
“It was like a huge shock to all of us because we were given zero corrective action beforehand.”
Cooper summarized the order of events this way: He said that on Wednesday, Sept. 6, at about 11:30 p.m., Braithwaite and Willis called Cooper and his RA partner into their office to ask them about a photo on social media of a student at a party. The student lived in one of their buildings, and the social media post demonstrated that the student was not in Village after night check, which begins at 11 p.m. Sunday-Friday, according to the Southern Village Handbook. However, the student was still marked present.
“[The deans] said that there was a picture on social media of a resident at a party, and when he was confronted, … he said, ‘I didn’t think it mattered at all because we never see our RAs anyways,’” Cooper stated. “That’s what I remember. That’s what the deans … told us, saying, ‘We have evidence that there was a resident who was not in Village, but he was put on check.’”
Cooper and his partner told the deans that they did not enter their residents’ apartments that evening before marking them present on night check, Cooper said. Willis told them they would most likely be fired, according to Cooper, but they were not officially terminated at that time.
Cooper said Residence Life then checked the locks on all the Village buildings to see whether or not RAs were actually entering apartments to check on their residents each night. About a week later, the seven RAs were officially terminated, according to Cooper and the other former RA.
“It was like a huge shock to all of us because we were given zero corrective action beforehand, like absolutely nothing,” said the former RA who did not want to be identified.
Unlike Cooper, they had no previous knowledge that they might be let go.
“[The deans] started calling us into the office one by one to fire us [with] no discussion of any type of corrective action previous to being fired — straight from everything’s fine to we’re fired,” they said.
Both students said the reason so many RAs did not consistently enter apartments before marking residents as present on their phones was because that was the standard set by former Village RAs. Historically, Village RAs, typically for men’s apartments, would learn their residents’ routine bedtimes after engaging with them for a while and then stop entering each apartment at night when they deemed it unnecessary, according to both former RAs. However, both said they understood the behavior was wrong and expressed similar sentiments of regret and frustration.
“I feel terrible for what I did. I realize that I put the deans in a [tough] situation, and I begged for a second chance,” Cooper said. “ … [But], no one asked us why we did it. It didn’t seem like we were very much listened to.”
“I regret that I let myself sort of buy into the culture that it’s not important to be super thorough with check,” the other former RA said. “ … If there [had been] one single mention from the deans of, ‘Hey, you need to be better,’ I’m instantly, like, the best RA they’ve ever seen.”
Cooper believes that had all the fired RAs been given another chance, they would not have skipped proper night checks ever again. He added that he worked for Residence Life for three years prior to this semester and wanted another shot at showing the department he was a great worker.
Cooper believes the whole situation, which began on Sept. 6 and ended about two weeks later when his appeal to stay in Village was denied, was not handled well and damaged his mental health, causing him to lose sleep and fail three tests.
“I feel terrible for what I did. I realize that I put the deans in a [tough] situation.”
Cooper said the appeal process, specifically, was hurtful. He and the other RAs who wrote the appeal to stay in Village spoke in person to Director of Residence Life Lisa Hall, who told them to speak with Negrón, Cooper stated.
Negrón told them he would speak with the deans, according to Cooper, and the three students heard from the deans that their appeal did not go through. Cooper said he was confused by the process, as he assumed the appeal would go to a different committee and not straight back to the deans. He felt like administrators were leading them in a loop.
“Communication was not there at all. We didn’t know what was going on,” Cooper said. “We were given false hope pretty much [because] the deans were like, ‘You know what? You should appeal to stay in Village.’ … We all thought, ‘Oh, hey, they might let us stay in Village because they are pushing for it,’ and then, lo and behold, we got the word saying ‘no.’”
The other former RA also expressed frustration about how communication was conducted during and after the firing process, as no one would identify who made the final decision to fire the RAs, and administrative responses came across uncharacteristically rigid.
“Communication was not there. We didn’t know what was going on.”
“The deans made it sound like it was Negrón; Negrón is saying it’s the deans,” the student said. “Whenever we go and talk to [the deans] in person, they’re like, ‘We still believe you’re upstanding citizens, and we care for you guys so much.’ And then, as soon as it’s an email, it’s just, like, so much more harsh. … [But] Dean Willis and Dean [Braithwaite] are like the nicest people ever. They’re amazing people. I am privileged to have been able to work with them. … I have so much respect [for them].”
Willis and Braithwaite spoke with the Accent about the process of filling the open Village RA positions. At first, the two deans hired students to conduct night checks, but the students did not technically work as RAs, as they had no other RA responsibilities. Now, the deans are looking to fill the open RA positions, but, as of Monday, Oct. 3, have only filled a couple.
“We have enough right now that we can get check taken care of, but we need to fill a few more,” Willis said, “whether that be somebody that’s going to be a full-time RA or someone just to help us get to January when we can regroup.”
Students interested in applying for an RA position or helping with night check can email svdeans@southern.edu, Willis said. Braithwaite added that students qualify for the RA position if they already live in Village and can devote 15 hours a week to the job.
