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position as counselor and as a
landlord.

Several resident staff
members interviewed believe
that the Student Affairs and
Housing Offices must organize
and better coordinate their
involvement with the Resident
Staff program. "Communications
are really lacking," one
senior resident says, "both
between these offices as well as
between them and us."

"I think Mr. Main forgets
that he is dealing with people,"
he added. "Mr. Titus seems
genuinely interested in the
program, but Mr. Main seems
only worried that the Terms
and Conditions be enforced to
the letter, using his
interpretation of them."

Another RA called Mr.
Main the "most inept man at
dealing with people that I have
ever seen, whose edicts
sometimes border on the
ridiculous."

Lawn Head Resident Jim
Babb cited one specific
example of this: Mr. Main's
prohibition of colored or lined
note pads on dorm room
doors. His reasons were that
"colored paper is too
provocative and lined paper is
too flammable," Mr. Babb said.
  Counselors seem to
want to fulfill their Terms and
Conditions   enforcement
contract, but are bothered by
the Housing Office's
uncommunicativeness. One
first-year dorm RA said
students on her hall
"understand my position and
understand when I have to ask
them not to use hotplates. This
sort of thing doesn't bother me
or them."

She added, however, that
she found it frustrating to do
her job and then to receive no
response to a request for
Housing to replace several
missing lampshades in her
suite. For many months, she
said, Housing made no move to
replace them. "Finally, I was
so fed up that one night when I
was drunk I took a
couple of lampshades from
a lounge to replace the ones
missing from my suite. We
probably still wouldn't have
any if I hadn't done that."

Two RA's said they
received complaints for their
residents' lack of refrigerator
registration. However, they had
not received any notice of the
registration deadline. One
counselor said that she would
not have known when the
registration deadline was if she
had not seen it in The Cavalier
Daily. "I received no formal
notice from Housing about it
to tell my kids," she said,
"until the trouble report saying
that they hadn't registered
them came."

A first-year dorm RA said
he believes that Mr. Main "has
good intentions...maybe he's
just trying to be efficient to
the point of oblivion. There
just might be a method in his
madness."

Several RA's criticized Mr.
Main's handling of students'
moves from triple rooms.
"Some students wanted to
remain in triples when a space
elsewhere opened," one RA
stated. "And they really had to
fight to stay."

But in other cases, places
were available and Mr. Main
did not begin filling them, she
added. "For example, Nursing
students are supposed to live in
McKim Hall, but this year a
Nursing student is living in an
Alderman Rd. dorm until she
finds an apartment. While
first-year kids are in triples and
are entitled to the space, she is
paying monthly rent to the
Housing Office and taking up
the space."

This complaint, she said, "is
just another example of the
Housing Office's inability to
solve problems."

However, Dean of Students
Robert T. Canevari said that
"many people criticize the
Housing Office because it's the
thing to do."

First-year Resident Staff
Co-Chairman Ed Wilson echoed
this statement. "Last spring,
they were putting new doors in
the dorms, and people were
critical of Mr. Main because
there was a three-month delay.
What they didn't know was
that the carpenter had screwed
up his plans; it was beyond Mr.
Main's control."

The other First-Year
Co-Chairman, Byrd Leavell, said
that he and Mr. Wilson "are
working on better
communications and
correspondence with the
Housing Office." He also
reiterated that counselors
had signed a contract to
enforce Terms and Conditions,
and he believes that counselors
are fulfilling these.

The primary problem in the
Resident Staff program,
according to almost all staff
members interviewed, springs
from a lack of communication
and a difficulty in
differentiating between roles as
friend and landlord.