By Evan Robert Smith ‘15 & Katya Schwab ‘17
Published March 2015
Part of the hustle and bustle during spring semester includes the opportunity for students to apply for positions within the community for the upcoming year. At Randolph some of these positions include running for Student Government, applying for a position in Residential Life as an RA, or applying to be a Davenport Leader to work with incoming first-years.
In the past, positions of Resident Assistant (RA) or Davenport Leader were both competitive; last year 32 applicants competed for 13 positions as an RA and 59 applicants applied for 16 positions as a Davenport Leader. However, this year both positions had to extend application deadlines in hopes of gaining more applicants.
Amanda Denny, Director of Leadership and Engagement explained that the Davenport deadline was extended because “if there were students on the fence about applying we wanted to give them the opportunity since numbers were lower than what we experienced in the past.” After the extended deadline closed, Davenport applications had increased from 22 to 26. The program still calls for 16 student leaders to be chosen from those who applied.
Student sentiments reflect hesitation to apply for the program since the required workload of Davenport leaders increased without a change in compensation. Each Davenport Leader receives a stipend of $1000 for the year—for the 2015-2016 year that stipend will be split into three payments. Although this stipend has not changed, the time commitment the Davenport program will demand for the next academic year has shifted.
New elements of the program include the Davenport Leaders working as peer mentors for FYS classes that request a mentor, as well as several formal meetings between Davenport Leaders and first-year students to check in on adjustment to college. Denny envisions three or four formal “connection” meetings in the first semester and one meeting in the second semester depending on each first-year’s personal need for support. Denny envisions these formal meetings ranging from social group gatherings to informative meetings about registration or traditions such as Ring Week to help First-Years get involved more with the community at Randolph. “Leaders may also check in with first-years informally through the year because they are going to have a good idea of who is still shaky and needs additional support throughout the year,” said Denny. She also hopes that the program can help get first-years more involved outside of the red brick wall to help “each student feel like Lynchburg…and not just Randolph is home for four years.”
These changes are a result of feedback from both first-years and Davenport Leaders the past years, as well as a pilot program last year when Grace Cummins ‘16 held a year long Davenport Leader position to observe benefits and drawbacks of extending the program. Student feedback of the past Davenport program included concerns that once orientation ended at the beginning of the year, there were no formal connections between first-years and their Davenport Leader. “We hear that Davenport Leaders want a way to keep that connection more formally,” Denny said. “They have a hard time doing that informally because student’s schedules are busy.”
According to Denny, first-years reported that having an extended connection with Davenport leaders was beneficial in both social and academic settings. Denny added, “most orientation leaders do run a year long model, and that is something we have been lacking.”
So, with the added requirements, why no change to Davenport Leaders’ salary? As explained by Denny, the Davenport program is an endowed fund, limiting the flexibility of the school to the budget provided. Furthermore, any budget changes would have to be approved, and “to change the stipend or funding would require proof the program is working.” In other words, the planned changes to the program must be made first and shown as successful before requesting additional funding. Furthermore, Denny also explained that the stipend each student receives is comparable to similar first-year programs run by other colleges and universities and that “there is research out there that shows we are pretty much along the same base line.”
The Residential Life program at Randolph also seemed to experience a decrease in student interest this past year. There has also been notable turnover in Residential Life this academic year including the hiring of four replacement RAs (Anthony Quinn ’17, Annalise McKenzie ’17, Jenny Sanborn ’17, and Dianna Young ’18) and one new Head Resident (HR), Katya Schwab ‘17. HR, Abigail Smith ’14, graduated in December resulting in the hiring of Schwab as the new HR of West. Since Schwab was an RA, Quinn was hired to move onto her hall. The other three RA’s hired mid-semester were brought on to replace other RA’s who chose to either quit their job with Residential Life or leave the College for personal reasons. Names and details are not printed out of respect for privacy.
This year, 23 students applied for the position of RA to fill 12-16 positions available, depending on where each person is placed. Last year 32 students applied to fill 13 positions. The increase in positions this year includes several factors: four RAs are graduating in April, four RAs were hired to replace graduating HRs, four RAs are leaving Residential Life to study abroad at some point next year, and four potential new positions have opened up with the planned opening of Wright Hall for the 2015-2016 academic year.
The question now becomes, why the drop in interest for leadership positions among Randolph students?
“I’m concerned about leadership in general, seeing that RA applications are down, seeing that Davenport applications are down, and knowing that it has been hard to recruit and retain students for student government positions over the past few years—makes me wonder what the particular issue is. I don’t know if it’s an issue against a certain program more so than just an issue with leadership at Randolph,” said Denny. Denny has also reached out to other small liberal arts schools, such as Lynchburg College, and has found they have similar trends. Denny plans to reach out to other small colleges as well to see if this is a national trend and investigate how to best respond.
At a conference held by the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities (APCA), Mike Fritz, a student leadership speaker with a Master’s degree in leadership presented a session on engaging student leaders and commented on the apparent trend of decreasing student involvement. “I don’t think people don’t want to do things,” Fritz reflected, “—they just want to do what matters to them.”
In addition to the issues that Residence Life and the Davenport Leadership Institute have faced in regards to student involved, it is also important to investigate the numbers of student involvement in other leadership organizations like Student Government, the Judiciary Committee, and Class Board.
There has not been a huge drop-off in student interest regarding Student Government, the Judiciary Committee, or Class Board compared to the initial drops seen in the applications for the Davenport Leadership Institute and Residence Life, though these organizations have struggled at times with engaging students to run for office.
Class Board in particular shows an appalling level of interest recently (Figure 1). For two years in a row, the Classes of 2016 and 2017 have had only one person run for office. Current Senior Class President Sarah Cottone believes that class boards would be empowered if they were better connected to Student Government, and she also believes that a class board’s larger purpose on campus should be better communicated to the rest of the student body. Senior Class Vice President Sam Fagone shares those sentiments and thinks that the duties of each position on the board should be better defined. If these changes were made, both women believe that more students would be interested in running for the organization.
Interest in Student Government is slightly down from last year, but is adequate to fill all of the positions except for secretary (Figure 2). In the past, senators were designated by residence halls, but thanks to last spring’s Student Government President Marielle Rando ‘14, this year was the first ever in which senators have been designated by class year. As a result, there are now four guaranteed senator positions for each class year. This guarantees that first-years and sophomores will have the same representation as juniors and seniors. In addition, this year’s Student Government has designated a senator position for international students as well as for day and primetime students. It will be interesting to see if the loss of student interest in Res Life and Davenport will be the gain of Student Government through these new senator designations.
Looking at the Judiciary Committee, the most noticeable difference from last year is that no one is currently running for the Chair position (Figure 3). This is a problematic since it is unclear how the Judiciary Committee would run without a Chair. While Student Government and Class Board are important organizations, the Judiciary Committee is essential to academic integrity and reputation of Randolph, so finding a chair is of the utmost importance.
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