Residence Hall Association
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Residence Hall Association (RHA) is a student-run university residence hall governing body. It is usually (but not always) the parent organization for individual hall governments. Their function is similar to a student government, except that most of their activities pertain to on-campus living. Most RHAs are either subordinate to or a division of their student governments — however a few are independent and relatively equal.
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[edit] Naming
Most residence hall governing bodies are called a Residence Hall Association, however some universities differ in their conventions. Some universities and colleges use the following names:
- Resident Students Association
- Residence Halls Association
- Inter-Residence Hall Council
- Inter-Residence Council
[edit] Programming
RHA's primary concern is large programming efforts during the academic year, including:
- Welcome Week
- Homecoming
- Family Weekend
- Sibling Weekend
- Casino Night
- Summer Send-Off
- Residence Hall Week
[edit] Resident issues
Sometimes RHAs are also involved in resident issues on campuses. Often, RHAs deal with concerns about things such as hall visitation hours, hall security, hall safety, building services (repairs and upgrades), and general hall environment. Some organizations go so far as to vote on legislative policy changes on their campuses while others shy away from policy change for various reasons.
[edit] Structure
RHAs are generally structured with an executive board that leads the organization and a general assembly comprised of hall councils and occasionally other hall-based groups. Each hall council is considered the hall government for the hall they represent. In most cases there is one hall council per residence hall, however smaller halls are sometimes joined together to serve as one unified body and larger halls are sometimes broken down into smaller units.
[edit] Affiliation
Many RHAs are affiliated with NACURH, the National Association of College and University Residence Halls, which acts as a networking/professional conference for resident leaders. Many RHAs have a NCC or National Communications Coordinator position in order to facilitate communication with other RHA's throughout the country. Much of this communication takes place in chat rooms on AOL Instant Messenger. NCCs also communicate in board meetings at regional conferences every fall (MACURH is the Midwest conference, CAACURH is the Central conference), the national NACURH conference in the spring, and conferences aimed solely at legislation every February (called "No Frills" because the conference isn't geared towards school spirit like the conferences in the fall and spring). RHA members may post on the NACURH forums found on the NACURH website[1].
[edit] Budget
The budget for an RHA is primarily taken directly from the fees charged to residents every semester. Most schools' RHAs get their money from a University general fund, although some RHAs such as Michigan State University's collect theirs through student-voted taxes. Budgets for RHA have a broad range depending on the size of their school's resident population, from less than $5,000 to upwards of $700,000 per year. At the University of St. Thomas, for example, each resident pays $20 per semester. $6 of this goes to the RHA executive board, $6 goes to their individual hall council, $6 goes to their Resident Advisor (RA), and the remaining $2 is to be spent in preparation for the aforementioned conferences.
[edit] Status
Most RHAs are considered a part of their school's student government, however some, such as Michigan State, are separate. Most of these RHAs design their own websites with agendas, pictures, legislation, and other news.
