The resident assistants for Eastern are 58 percent female and 42 percent male, according to Amelia Turner, student worker for the Housing Office and a sophomore family and consumer sciences major.

“There are more female floors than there are male floors, so that makes sense,” said Mark Hudson, Director of Housing and Dining.

However, next year will be the first year that Stevenson Hall has more male RAs than females.

“Normally we have four males and four females, but next year there will be five males and three females,” said Brittney Fentress, Assistant Resident Director of Stevenson. “We wanted to hire more upperclassmen, so we had a more narrow candidate pool. We just hired this number because we thought they would be the best bets.”

Fentress said she does not think it is being biased towards anyone.

“Like I said, we needed more juniors and seniors and we didn’t want a lot of people who were younger,” she said. “Stevenson wants to have more older people for the floors. It is the first hall that wants to implement something like this.”

Turner does not have any opinion on the change of RAs in Stevenson.

“I really can’t say anything about it because I live in Greek Court this year and next year I will be living off-campus,” she said.

The main reason for this change is because there are more male upperclassmen.

“Not necessarily as a mandatory requirement, but (having more upperclassmen RAs) is something we are encouraged to keep in mind while hiring, since Stevenson is upperclassmen we want upperclassmen RAs,” Fentress said. “Stevenson also really looks at who will be the best fit for the job.”

This new plan is part of a departmental initiative that management and housing is setting up for next year.

“It is better to have more upperclassmen as RAs and have lived in the halls longer and we want underclassmen to work as other leaderships, like hall council and RHA, so they can be prepared in the future and if and when they actually do become an RA,” Fentress said.

Fentress thinks the males and females will all work fine together, just like in the past, even though the number is offset.

“I don’t think that gender has anything to do with staff requirements or whether they can interact with their floors because the floors are co-ed anyway,” she said.

Other things need to be taken into consideration as well.

“Where the RA lives is called a K suite,” Hudson said. “The RA and another room share a bathroom, so by changing the gender of the RA is the person is the other room because of course you have to keep the gender the same. If you are a returning RA, we need to match the gender of the person in the other room with that person.”

This makes Stevenson sort of a unique situation.

“On almost all cases, it is determined by the case of the floor,” Hudson said. “Stevenson is a little different because since it is a co-ed floor it needs to match with the bathroom that they both share.”

At other schools in the state, Illinois State University has more female RAs on campus, according Susan Dudolski, chairman of RA selection committee at ISU.

“Estimates are almost even, we are looking at around 74 females and 54 males for the coming fall semester,” she said. “That would be 60 percent woman and 40 percent males.”

At Western Illinois University, the number was 66 men and 84 females for a total of 150 RAs. The percentage is 44 percent male and 56 percent female.

No other halls at Eastern so far are looking into having more upperclassmen RAs so far.

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

JP Murray (left) talks to the resident assistant on the third floor of Stevenson, Ben Roth. Starting next year, Stevenson will be hiring more male RA’s than they have in the past. (Erin Matheny/The Daily Eastern News)

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