University of Virginia Library

'Counselors': Handling The Housing Hassles

By BILL BARDENWERPER
and MARGARET ALFORD

Call a counselor a counselor
and he will tell you he isn't
Tell Chester Titus that you do not
get along with your counselor
and his response may well be
"with whom?" Ask Ralph Main
about the revised counseling
program and he might say
"The what?"

"Being labeled a counselor
is a misnomer," said Assoc. Dean
of Students, Chester R. Titus.
"At one time "counselor" was a
unique title which belonged to
the resident staff people. We
didn't then have the
Counseling Center, for
instance. But now there are
counselors all over the place."

"What the resident staff
does is not the same as that
which goes on in a Counseling
Center. Rather it is peer
counseling which is not
counseling really in a technical
sense."

It is true; counselors are no
longer counselors– they are
resident staff, and their name is
not all that has changed. Last
spring's switch in name from
Counseling to Resident Staff
program was designed to make
members of the program more
aware of their responsibilities
to the Housing Office.

However "counselors" also
believe that the Housing Office

is beginning to monopolize
their responsibilities, all but
obstructing their primary
function as friends to students
living on their halls.

Although the resident
assistant's (RA's) duty is to be
available to students for
guidance or friendship as well
as to enforce Housing's Terms
and Conditions, preoccupation
with the latter and

bureaucratic procedures "often
become an undue burden,"
a Balz House RA said.

"There are, of course, those
who look upon the paper-work
as drudgery," said Mr. Titus.
"But if you look upon it as a
means of communication, it
isn't that bad."

The bureaucracy is still
there, though; and most
resident members insisted that
this was their real complaint.

When the Housing Inspector
notices a violation of the
Terms and Conditions in a
residence house, the RA of the
suite or hall involved as well as
the dorm's senior teden
receive a complaint letter from
Housing Director Ralph E.
Main. They must correct the
difficulty and respond to Mr.
Main on action taken.

Each complaint from
Housing on a dorm problem
brings a mark on a record, and
if marks mount up, unpleasant
consequences may result.

If a problem is not
immediately corrected, said
one first-year resident assistant,
"dorm staff are continually
pelted with more letters and
questions until the Housing
Office is satisfied and the
resident staff are exhausted
and peeved."

However, if residents or
resident staff complain to
Housing, action does not come
so quickly, or necessarily ever,
the Balz RA continued.

"All correspondence is one
way," a first-year dorm
counselor said. "They expect
you to reply immediately, but
if you write to them, initiating
a complaint, you'll never hear
from them."

One first-year dorm senior
resident's job was recently in
jeopardy because of failure to
comply with Housing "trouble
reports."

His battle with Housing has
been a running one,
continually putting him in the
bad graces of Mr. Main for the
simple reason that he refuses to
let the Terms and Conditions
stand in the way of his being a
good "counselor".

Chester R. Titus

In September, an RA in his
dorm had a water bed which
the senior resident allowed him
to keep. "Housing forbids
water beds because they have
nowhere to store the unused
University bed," the RA said.
"But in this case the University
bed was also kept in my room.
I wasn't cohabiting and that
water bed just wasn't hurting
anybody. In fact, I thought the
extra bed provided a point of
conversation to attract kids to
come into my room and talk at
the beginning of the year."

The Housing Office didn't
quite see it that way, so they
ordered that the water bed be
removed. But the RA could
not act on the request for a
week, he claimed, because of
time required to dismantle the
water bed. In the meantime,
both the senior resident and RA
were called to the Housing
Office, where they were
accused of failure to comply
with Terms and Conditions.

"We were really in hot
water then," the senior
resident said. "But that wasn't
the end of our problems."

Later complaints from the
Housing Office concerned
bicycles on the dorm balconies.
"We asked for more bicycle
racks because a lack of them
was the cause of the problem.
However, none of them were
installed until December, and
even that didn't provide places
for all the bikes."

"Meanwhile, Housing kept
sending us complaints. At first
we responded, but after a while
it got too tedious to explain
over and over that the reason
that the bicycles were on the
balconies was because there
was no rack space."

Housing Deficiencies Criticized

"We stopped writing back
to Mr. Main. After all, he
hadn't responded to our
requests yet. This really made
Housing furious. At the end of
the first semester our dorm had
the most complaints of any
dorm," the senior resident said,
"and that's when I found out
that my future in the program
was dim. Now they say that
this will go on my record,
whatever that means."

"Nothing has really gone
wrong in our dorm, though,"
he added. "It's all intact, and
the deficiencies that are there
are usually Housing's fault."

He has been in the program
for several years, and has
enjoyed it, he says. Given the
chance, however, he would not
reapply for a staff position
next year because of his recent
problems with the Housing
Office, he said.

Students in his dorm say
that he has done an excellent
job of maintaining order in the
dorm yet he has not let the
enforcement of a few petty
rules overcome the community
spirit not always common to
dorms.

"Kangaroo Court" Held

The Executive Committee
of Counselors (composed of all
senior residents) recently held a
"kangaroo court" for him,
which resulted in their
recommendation that he not
be fired. The executive
committee also sent a
requested letter to Assoc. Dean
of Students Chester R. Titus
justifying why the senior
resident should remain in the
program. He will be able to
keep his position.

Several RA's criticized this
burden that the Housing Office
places on senior residents as
overseers. "Don't they think
we're at all responsible?" one
queried. "The senior residents
shouldn't be made to look over
our shoulders all the time and
be penalized for some detail we
are accused of missing.

"There is far too much
emphasis on the 'big brother is
watching you' idea in this
program, with someone just a
little higher and a little more
powerful than each
person...there are too many
'yes-men'," he continued.

"The Resident Staff program
needs some of this hierarchy
cut out and more casual and
individual responsibility. I
think everyone has the
ability... it's just a matter of
Housing putting trust in us.
Right now we are friends to
students first and are
policemen second. But I think
Housing would like it to be the
other way around," he adds.

The problem facing the
Resident Staff seems to be one
not as much of drawing the
line between being a friend and
a disciplinarian, but between a