Eastern’s Residence Hall Association won School of the Year at the Illinois Residence Hall Association Conference, held Feb. 8-10 at Augustana College.

“We won School of the Year, NRHH representative of the year, Member of the Year and most IRHA points,” said Brittany Kraft, RHA Communications Coordinator.

“IRHA is a statewide conference for all the RHA halls and we won on a state level,” said Nicole Mette, National Residence Hall Honorary Communications Coordinator, “We won Large Institution of the Year and Verstrate Outstanding Service Award, which was made in the honor of a North Central student who was killed. This was awarded to Becky Wilson from Stevenson.”

RHA also won best Roll Call for having a skit called “Scuba Boy,” performed by the Scuba Steve doll, which was a spin-off of the song “Soulja Boy” by Soulja Boy Tellem.

The two awards for NRHH-NRHH Chapter Member of the Year and NRHH Representative of the Year-went to Eastern.

Mette won Member of the Year and Representative of the Year went to Jeffrey Foxman.

“I guess I was more excited for the other people who won the awards; they were great leaders and they definitely deserved it,” Mette said.

Also, one of NRHH’s delegates, Jerry Shell, won Top Ten Program of the Year.

“We applied to win these awards and just going to the conference we got the most IRHA points and beat out all the other Illinois schools,” Mette said.

Next year’s conference is still without a home because no school volunteered to host the event. At an IRHA retreat in April, the decided location of the 2009 conference will be announced.

Kraft said that, if there were enough interest, she would like to host the event at Eastern next year.

Eastern also got an award for having someone from RHA as part of the IRHA executive board. Kraft was elected to the IRHA executive board two weeks ago and officially started on February 9.

In other news, students will wear red, white and blue for next week’s RHA meeting. Elections will be next week at Andrews Hall at 5:00 p.m. The meeting will run twice as long as usual. Nominations were made last night at the meeting.

“The meeting is going to be different. All reports, including executive reports, will be cut,” said Jarrod Scherle, sophomore engineering major and RHA president, “Each candidate will prepare a speech and it will probably take about two hours.”

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or at haholm@eiu.edu.

Brittany Kraft, a sophomore and the RHA’s National Communication Coordinator/ Illinois Communication Coordinator speaks about how well Eastern Illinois University did at IRHA, receiving the award for best school of the year. (Erica Jones/ Daily Eastern Ne

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