I believe I was praying to Ra for a little more sun when I first heard of the new housing and residence life course being offered. Perhaps Ra mistook the one-credit, pass-or-fail class for a ray of light.

I am intrigued for two reasons.

One: there is the option for me to apply to be the ‘co-instructor,’ or as I will, for the rest of this column, refer to as ‘the apprentice,’ a three-credit opportunity to instill in my younger, unenlightened brethren, ‘vision, mission and values.’

Two: there is the option for me to write this editorial. For those of you who don’t know which option I have decided to go with, this class may just be the very best decision you have made in your life.

I, personally, could not make myself roll out of bed every day if I knew it was to lead discussions on how to ‘foster a positive, welcoming environment on your floor community’ or to brainstorm ‘some of the strategies that you might use.’

All too often I get the sense that residence life is about keeping up appearances, asking questions for the sake of asking questions, with little regard for the answers. Other times, it seems like the Joker is breathing down my neck, growling, ‘Let me put a smile on that face.’

But I am already smiling. And that’s because it’s all beginning to become clearer to me; the reason they are now offering this course. It’s because that the class is now part of the resident assistant (RA)/apartment living advisor (ALA) application process.

The reason they want me to be their ‘apprentice’ all boils down to this: Housing and Residence Life has no ‘- and, I repeat, no ‘- idea what leadership is.

Leadership isn’t born out of some class, and it is most certainly not the result of receiving a ‘P’ on your SPIRE account. It is not born out of stimulating discussion, either.

On the contrary, leadership is a combination of intuition and experience. As someone who has gone through RA training, I can tell you. The students selected as new RAs were exactly the same people on move-in day as they were during vacation, although slightly less tan.

They were all different types of leaders: authoritative, diplomatic, task-oriented, goal-oriented, talkers, listeners and everything in between. But they all shared one thing in common. When asked which activity they enjoyed the most, their answer was as unanimous as it was resounding, ‘enter the RA.’

Why was ‘enter the RA’ so popular? Not only was it entertaining and a nice break from a long list of seminars and information sessions, but it was also the only interactive section of training. It was the only experience the fresh batch of RAs had with confronting real life problems.

So what is the benefit of taking this course? Essentially, there is none.

Of course, it is now a requirement for prospective RAs and ALAs, even if they are eventually rejected and at best placed in the alternate pool.

What residence life is trying to do is emulate the kind of education found in Commonwealth College‘s honors courses, or the department’s Citizen Scholars Program.

But the discrepancy residence life fails to acknowledge is the difference in experience. Commonwealth College places an emphasis on applying knowledge to the real world. The Citizen Scholars Program requires students to reach out to the community; to choose an issue that deeply concerns them and to act on it and to become a proponent of change.

This course, however, does no such thing. It distances itself from students, rather than engaging with them. And, as a result, the assigned readings carry little weight. It instead advocates a superficial approach to building community, resting only on the hope that community will be built and that students will thrive on their own. But hope, Confucius reminds us, is as hollow as fear.

Perhaps it is a fear dwelling in the heart of housing and residence life that hinders it from pushing students out of their comfort zone, from making them really learn and transform into leaders. A fear that students are not children anymore, that the babysitting is over and the parents are miles away.

But then, why be afraid?

Elie Feinstein is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].