One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, safety restrictions have impacted many members of the Monmouth University community—and on-campus residential assistants (RAs) are no exception. In a short period of time, RAs had to adjust to a completely different way of interacting with residential students.
Mia Ardovini-Brooker, a senior political science student with a concentration in legal studies, has been an RA at Cedar Hall for about two years. She had the opportunity to experience being an RA before the pandemic.
“It was hard at first because we have never had to worry about so many restrictions on our programs before this,” Ardovini-Brooker said. “It was hard to get residents to come to programs pre-COVID so during COVID, it has been even harder.”
However, Ardovini-Brooker mentioned that time has really helped her students engage and participate in events. “Once residents came to the first couple of programs, they opened up and have continued to come to them,” she said, “It is not hard to engage residents when you take the time to get to know them and their personalities. This helped me understand what they would want to participate in.”
Mike Fazzino, a first-year graduate student in the Student Affairs and College Counseling program has been a University RA for three years. He is the head RA of Hesse Hall.
“One of the biggest challenges is making sure everyone is following the COVID guidelines when in the residence halls, and even more so trusting that they are doing the right thing when they leave campus,” he said.
Fazzino and Ardovini-Brooker share the same challenge when it comes to engaging with their residential students.
“There will always be a challenge with getting people into a Zoom call, but it’s all about finding creative ways to make people want to join and offer something unique or unexpected,” Fazzino added. He also said that creating events for residents was mostly trial and error to find activities that gauge student interest.
Both Fazzino and Ardovini-Brooker have been hard at work to create engaging activities for their residents, such as a virtual trivia night hosted every Tuesday night at Hesse Hall where students can compete for gift cards. Additionally, they have implemented “grab and go” programs with individually-packaged snack bags for movie nights via Netflix Party. In the future, Fazzino hopes to host a March Madness style video game tournament.
Over at Cedar Hall, Ardovini-Brooker hosted a special event for the Super Bowl. “I got snacks for my residents and asked them to put their name in a bag for the team they thought was going to win. At the end of the night, we picked a name out of the winning team’s bag and the winner received a gift card of their choosing,” she described.
While trying to engage their residential students and give them the best college experience possible amid the pandemic, RAs have also had to adjust to this new reality.
Fazzino shared, “I think the biggest adjustment for me personally…is having to stay vigilant and follow our guidelines. I’m a really social person…but I think we are all finding new, creative ways to satisfy that need for social interaction and I’m proud of what we have accomplished in Hesse.”
“I have had to be more careful/cautious,” Ardovini-Brooker added. “A lot of my friends are RAs in other buildings, so we have had to find ways to hangout that follow COVID guidelines implemented by the university. It has been hard, but it definitely beats being at home away from everyone.”
Fazzino and Ardovini-Brooker offer a piece of advice to current residential students.
“Get involved! Talk to your RAs because they can be a friend and support system for you (that is what we are here for). Lastly, get to know everyone in your building because you can hang out with them” said Fazzino.
“I would tell students to take advantage of whatever activities or events are being offered to them, keep up with what’s happening around campus because there is always something, and even tell people to be creative and come up with a program idea or a way to engage,” Ardovini-Brooker said.
She continued, “I want to commend all of the RA’s and CA’s for remaining vigilant, being creative, and staying strong throughout this academic year. It’s been a challenge, but they have all stepped up to the plate and done a great job within their building communities.”
PHOTOS COURTESY of Anthony DePrimo
