Students can now join a community-building programming effort called HallCrew created by the Offices of Student Affairs and Housing & Residence Life.

HallCrews were created to begin a new form of student interaction with Housing & Residence Life (HRL).

“It’s the residents of the building that are going to be doing these programs,” David Cooper, an associate director of HRL said.

Residential Hall Association (RHA) is an organization working with HRL to provide “campus-wide programming along with a forum to voice ideas, opinions, and concerns,” according to its website. 

HallCrews will place new emphasis on “the programming piece of what RHA has historically done in the past,” Christina Coovert, Clark Hall Director and an advisor to RHA said.

HRL and Student Affairs have coordinated before for new efforts at Community Renewal and event programming.

“We’ve been working with Housing and Residence Life since February of last year trying to talk about ways that we can collaborate together,” Brad Thompson, student activities and marketing coordinator said.

TheCrew is looking to provide advice and resources to help the HallCrews successfully program events, Thompson said.

“TheCrew works as a behind-the-scenes group to resource the HallCrews in terms of supplies, marketing management, and also leadership training and development," Thompson said, who is also an advisor for theCrew.

 The creation of HallCrews is one way RHA is changing directions this year. 

“We decided we wanted to take RHA and stray a little bit away from the business side and make it more of a community effort instead of a business effort,” Lakota Cheek, president of RHA said.

In addition to potential changes in attendance requirements and general assembly decorum, the constitution of the organization will need “a couple changes,” Cheek said. 

Each residence hall will have a HallCrew to serve its residents.

“We’ve set more specific responsibilities for each of the people that are going to be appointed to the HallCrew leadership,” Coovert said.

For example, HallCrew representatives will attend RHA meetings and discuss programs in individual halls to the general assembly, Coovert said.

Initial student reaction to the HallCrews has been positive, Thompson said.

“I think the overall interest that we’ve seen with HallCrews so far in terms of students signing up for it has been really strong,” Thompson said.

Both Thompson and Cheek said they know the process of getting HallCrews up and running will take time.

“It’s a multi-year process," Thompson said. "It’s not going to happen in one semester.” 

Changes to RHA will be updated as the year progresses and have not been fully settled, Cheek said.

“It’s an open-ended question,” Cheek said.  “It’s basically like I was given a brand new organization.”