‘I think about quitting every day’: Enforcing COVID rules burdens Cal Poly RAs
The resident advisers at Cal Poly are “the face and voice of University Housing,” according to the school’s website.
It’s a tough position: RAs are tasked with monitoring campus residences and ensuring students stay safe, which means writing up those who violate alcohol, cannabis, loud noise and other ordinances. They’re often the first responders when students suffer a mental health crisis or alcohol poisoning.
And now, on top of that, they’re the university’s first responders for the COVID-19 pandemic that is undoubtedly leaching its way into campus dorms (20 students are in university-sanctioned quarantine or isolation as of Tuesday). The university has given them the task of constantly monitoring student compliance with health and safety guidelines that are murky at best.
The Tribune spoke with several RAs at Cal Poly about their experiences so far this year, along with University Housing and administration officials. Each RA asked to be kept anonymous due to fear of retribution from the university because it is against their contract to speak to media as representatives of University Housing.
They said the resulting stress is taking over their lives and leaving them with little time to concentrate on their classwork or mental health. They are asking for hazard pay and better communication from the administration.
“Have I thought of quitting?” one RA asked. “Oh yeah, I’ve thought about quitting. I think about quitting every day.”
“How can I be expected to take care of dozens of other residents if my own basic needs aren’t met first, and how can I expect to be able to focus on school right now when it feels like there is so much more important s--- going down right now?” another RA asked.
Only a couple days into fall quarter, one RA has already quit, saying that managing the increasing responsibilities of an RA along with the public health concerns on campus was too mentally taxing. About one RA usually resigns at the start of every school year, according to university spokesman Matt Lazier.
University officials said they did their best to adequately train the students for the job, but preparing for a response to a pandemic was something they had never done before. Some RAs said their concerns weren’t addressed during training when they asked questions about COVID-19 policies and issues.
“I got to this point where I just decided that I would always regret not saying something to somebody about this, and the people that are actually supposed to be able to help me that I’ve tried to say this to, are not listening to me,” one RA told The Tribune.
To be sure, the challenges they face this year can be daunting.
A little over 4,000 students who were likely forced to graduate high school from their couch at home, stay away from friends over the summer and refrain from visiting family across state or county lines are now cooped up alone in dorm rooms at a university that tells them they’ll be severely sanctioned — including possible suspension or expulsion — if they violate COVID-19 policies.
“Your options are to be lonely and isolated, sit on zoom and do your classes all day, or to risk your health to make friends,” an RA said. “Staying in on a Friday night would be safer, but I think emotionally it’s a really challenging thing because there’s still those social pressures on the students, you know, that hasn’t changed.”
RAs say training was inadequate
Typically, RAs are given about two to three weeks of in-person training and a series of online quizzes before the start of school. They learn how to handle the variety of situations that may arise, everything from how to help a student who has been locked out of their room, to what to do in cases of possible drug overdose.
This year, that training was adjusted to about six weeks of online modules and just five days of zoom seminars.
On top of that, RAs said the training was hardly modified to address handling situations during a global pandemic, and their questions regarding COVID-19 were often ignored or inadequately answered by officials.
“We would ask, like, how are we supposed to address an alcohol violation when there’s also a COVID violation, and how are we supposed to be protected from the virus in that situation?” one RA asked. “Then they (University Housing officials) would not really know how to answer it and they would want to keep talking about alcohol violations as if COVID wasn’t really going on. ... They would keep running out of time to talk about it, and then we would move on to something else.”
RAs were left confused as to why university officials could not seem to answer their questions, they said.
“The fact that they’re unable to provide an adequate response to the issues that are coming up despite having five months to prepare, we just kind of found ourselves wondering, like, what were they doing?” an RA asked.
The shortened schedule with little to no COVID-19 training left RAs feeling unprepared to be on the front lines of the pandemic, working to keep the campus community safe from the fast-spreading virus.
Some RAs said they now felt their job has turned into the “COVID police,” instead of one catered to building communities within the residence halls.
Juliette Duke, Cal Poly’s director of the residential student experience, said she and the others in charge of training the RAs did their best to prepare them for what was to come — but it wasn’t easy.
“We trained for what we thought and what we knew based on what we have experienced, but I think it’s definitely different than what the RAs thought it would be,” Duke said. “I don’t think there’s a way that we can fully train (RAs) to address everything that is going to come up because no one’s been through a pandemic.”
Duke said that where they could modify the training, they did.
“We’re all learning as we go along and adjusting as we move forward,” she said.
More communication needed from university officials, RAs say
As students began to move into the campus residence halls in early September, a heat wave hit California. Temperatures in San Luis Obispo hit a new record — a whopping 120 degrees — and stayed well above 90 degrees for several days.
It was also when Cal Poly’s Department of Emergency Management blocked access to water-filling stations in the buildings of the new yakʔityutyu complex for public health reasons. The only place students and families could refill water bottles was in the laundry rooms and bathrooms, or by taking a walk outside to a drinking fountain without motion sensors and which requires pressing a button to get water, RAs said.
RAs were not told why access to the water-filling stations had been closed off until a week later, they said — though university officials assert that campus documents sent to students before move-in mentioned that kitchens and lounges may be closed.
Cal Poly’s housing website says, “Study spaces and common spaces will be closed or reconfigured for social distancing,” but there is no mention as to how this would impact a student’s access to water.
“We were forced in this position of like, I don’t know, there’s this rule where people can’t get water, I guess,” one RA said. “Housing was not able to specify why our access to water was restricted for a week, despite RAs asking repeatedly.”
Students are now able to check out a key to individually access the water-filling station from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., an RA said.
Things like whether students are allowed to play frisbee, if they have to wear a mask outside when alone and how many people are allowed to gather at a time were still unclear to both residents and RAs throughout move-in. Just this past Friday, the university sent an email to RAs that said no more than 10 students could gather outside at the same time.
“And before they sent us that, we were having this issue where students were forming groups (outside). And sometimes they social distance, but it slowly gets more and more out of control,” one RA said. “We didn’t really feel like we have the training to address it, and because we just didn’t have enough staff — it’s like, oh my god, we’re two RAs looking at a group of 100 students.”
Cal Poly’s Vice President for Student Affairs, Keith Humphrey, said the RAs have “a huge job,” and that they have been asked to document every COVID-19 policy violation and send it to their supervisors, who will then take appropriate action.
“We’ve asked all of our staff across campus, when they see students who are not upholding guidelines, to take appropriate action,” Humphrey said. “The RAs do carry a larger share of that, particularly in the residence halls.”
The university does not tell RAs if a student on their floor has been quarantined or taken to isolation due to possible COVID-19 exposure. One RA said when they knock on doors, they’re not sure if a student isn’t answering because they’re outside, or if they’ve moved to a different dorm for isolation.
“We’re considered households here because we all share bathrooms,” an RA said. “So if someone in your house gets COVID, you should probably know.”
As of Tuesday, five students are in isolation — which means they are moved into a new residence for at least 10 days — and 15 are in self-quarantine — meaning they are asked to stay away from other residents for two weeks.
“The (COVID-19) policies are reasonable, they’re just not attainable,” another RA said. “And for that reason, I think that the university just shouldn’t have opened on-campus living up to this extent. It’s unfortunate because it gives me the sense that it was monetarily motivated instead of, you know, for the students well-being.”
RAs feel unsafe and want hazard pay
RAs are compensated for their campus duties through free housing and a meal plan.
Usually, that’s enough, they said. But not this year, so they’re asking for hazard pay from the university.
“I feel like I’m getting paid less because the living situation is so much more challenging,” one RA said.
RAs, like other students, were given a three-ply cloth face mask, a cloth gaiter and a face shield to protect them from possible exposure to the virus. However, RAs said those protections just don’t help them feel safe.
“The fact that we’re going from building to building, coming in some form of contact with the highest-risk people in the area, and then returning to our own buildings at the end of the day — that’s something I’m not at all comfortable with,” one RA said.
Additionally, RAs said they want more communication from Housing officials and the university administration. RAs said they should probably know the rules that they’re supposed to be enforcing, but it has not been that clear.
“Right now, there are choices being made that affect our lives really greatly every day like water access that we just don’t find out about because it doesn’t make it all the way through the channels to be communicated to us,” an RA said.
University administrators acknowledged the pressure on RAs.
“The start of school is always intense for the RAs,” Humphrey said. “But as the year goes on and things get figured out, it gets easier for them to manage everything they have going on.”
