May 24, 2009
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Marlatt 204
I moved out of Marlatt 204, my longtime college home, for the last time tonight. I think it will also be the last time I will ever move out of stately Marlatt Hall. Though I will return to Marlatt next year, it will only be for convenience and to see how my home fairs under the new conditions forced upon it.
Some background: Marlatt was the only all-male residence hall at Kansas State University for the past few years (ever since Haymaker went coed). This academic year, it was decided that Marlatt would be converted to a coed residence hall so that it could house the honors program cluster floor. This change (along with a few others) were kept secret until the last possible moment.Because K-State Housing & Dining Services refused to even allow residents and staff to comment on the change, several hall leaders have elected to not return to Marlatt Hall for another year. I myself must return as I intend to graduate in December, and finding a place to live that doesn’t charge you extra for staying only 5 months is difficult. I also don’t want to have to search for a new job for only a few months.
There are two things that really concern me about this change (aside from the fact that it was, in my opinion, ill-advised):
- Aside from salaried staff (the resident assistants), all females in the hall will either be freshman or transfers from another university – there were no females currently attending K-State to choose to live in Marlatt next academic year.
- The management (they) elected to not hire new desk staff (CAs & DAs) until next year. The reason given for this was because they wanted to give the new Residence Life Coordinator (RLC) ownership of the CA/DA staff. I say “BS!” There will be 7 to 9 returning desk staff. At least 2 of them are graduating in December and won’t be able to work much because aside from enduring our most brutal semester in the College of Engineering, we will also have to find a job for when we leave school. At least 1 of them (me) will be very busy with his summer job for the first couple of weeks of school, and I don’t work very much anyways during the school year. So there will be basically between 5-7 people to work 168 CA hours and 42 DA hours that first week. That right there is a huge red flag in and of itself.
Also, the RLC doesn’t really need ownership of the desk staff – unless a problem comes up, he only really needs to be there for performance reviews, training, and the 2 scheduling periods (and maybe not even that much). Most of the desk staff’s job is to either sit and wait for someone to need assistance or to perform simple tasks. The really complex student job is the RA position. The RLC has weekly meetings with the RAs sometimes, and also gets reports from them about what is happening on the floor. The new RLC for Marlatt will not have ownership of the RAs (his most critical student employees) for next year, because they had to be selected before he was even interviewed for his position.
What we think the real reason for waiting until next semester to hire desk staff is: they want to hire some female desk staff. Our problem with this reason, and why they won’t admit to it: why hire a freshman girl who has never lived in the halls before and is just starting to take classes at K-State instead of a man who has lived in the halls for a year or more and is familiar with K-State Housing policies and K-State policies in general? For example which is more likely to know where the post office is, or what a good resturant for a date is, how to give directions to the computer help place which is all the way across campus, or any other number of questions that sometimes don’t even have anything to do with Housing & Dining.
In short, I think it is foolish for K-State Housing & Dining to pursue these changes without even consulting us for our opinion (we do live here 24/7, for example) or provinding explanations for their desicions. In many meetings, the attitude we got was “We’re doing this, and there’s nothing you little peons can do to stop us.” We know that they’re above us on the food chain. And we don’t need them forcing changes upon us to remind us of that.
Comments (2)
That room has served you quite well.
I imagine that a lot of the guys who have lived in Marlatt for years will be moving out. The guys who stayed in Marlatt for more than one year usually liked that it was all-male and I’d guess that some of them will move out to apartments.
But the lack of listening to people who are actually affected by policies seems to be quite common throughout our society and I saw glimpses of it the few times I had to interact directly with Housing and Dining staff at K-State when I was there before.
When they did hire new desk employees, they hired 6 males and 3 females (originally 4, but 1 couldn’t accept the position). This was roughly proportional to the gender breakdown of people who turned in applications.
Thus far, I have been reasonably pleased by the new Marlatt leadership. I feel that at first they were too defensive. The first time I met my boss, I felt like she was afraid that I was going to get my pitchfork and noose when she talked forcefully about how a lot of things were going to change.
To date, out of 2 changes they made to desk procedures, 1 has been repealed, and the other change is that the records are computerized instead of kept on paper – not the most “totally different” situation they originally talked about. The main change has been that things are stored in different locations, which doesn’t really change the core of what my job is; its almost like I was in one building and just moved to a new building using the exact same job procedures, plus the upgrade/complication of computerizing records.