Residence halls have representative body

Students who live on campus can get involved with an organization
dedicated to help students make a change in residence hall life.

Residence Hall Assembly is made up of hall council presidents, hall
council representatives and an executive board that presides over
weekly meetings.

“If you live in the residence halls, then you are part of RHA,” said
Mark Hyzer, Lowell junior and Michigan Organizational Communications
Coordinator.

Hall councils are a body of students within each residence hall who
are concerned with issues in their halls and on campus.

Each residence hall has a council containing a president, vice
president, secretary, treasurer and RHA representatives. Students can
hold other leadership positions in their halls, but the titles vary by
hall.

Students may become involved in RHA by being team coordinators as
well. Teams include diversity, public relations, external programming,
internal programming, issues and philanthropy.

RHA allows students to meet people from other residence halls.

“You make good friends and have good times that you will never
forget,” RHA vice president and St. Clair Shores junior Dan Shadik said.

Kim Voisin, assistant director of Residence Life, serves as RHA’s
adviser.

“RHA offers students the opportunity to network with other residence
hall students, become involved in service and become more knowledgeable
and connected to residence hall issues,” Voisin said.

Building leadership within students also is a large part of the
organization.

A small delegation of students — 10 to 15 — are given the
opportunity to participate in state, regional and national residence
hall student leadership conferences.

“These conferences allow students to meet residence hall leaders
from other campuses and broaden their understanding of the issues and
challenges that other campuses face and how their experiences at CMU
compare,” Voisin said.

RHA helps to facilitate communication between residences and the
Office of Residence Life. The RHA Issues team has provided written
proposals on issues of importance to residence hall students including
cable services, allocation of residence hall parking and smoking
policies.

“RHA oversees a programming fund from which halls and groups of
halls can request funding for larger-scale programs,” Voisin said.
“These are programs that their hall councils might not otherwise be
able to fund.”

RHA also works to improve the campus community. They sponsor many
advocacy programs to make students aware of realistic issues happening
across campus.

Sober in October is a program that allows residence hall students to
pledge that they will not participate in drinking on or off campus.
Many activities take place throughout the month to keep students away
from alcohol.

One of RHA’s goals for the upcoming year is to work together with
Student Government Association to improve campus.

“We are going to try to bring RHA and SGA more together to attempt
to reach out in a combine effort to make CMU better,” Shadik said. “In
the past relations have not been good, but with the new e-board for
SGA, we are positive that we can bring the two organizations back
together.”