<p>I don’t think any of us has enough information yet to make any sort of judgment on the actions that have been taken, or that may be taken, by the school, and to make judgments about how poor their management is, or to compare this situation to other real life situations without additional facts requires making a lot of assumptions that may or may not play out. We certainly do not know that this particular group of RAs was being targeted or made an example of. How can you decide whether this was fair or not when we do not know all the facts? Or determine that there are only TWO possibilities? Unfortunately the world is usually not so black and white…</p>
<p>Scan, the only other posssibiltiy is that NONE of the other 174 RAs missed rounds. Relying on the newspaper, this does not seem likely. According to the paper, the other supervisors are supposed to report back by April 3rd with the results of their groups. The paper says they are looking for a partern. Do I personally think that the head of ResLife is desperately looking for a way to distinguish the 7 non-performers from any others? Yep. Otherwise what is this looking for patterns? The data should speak for itself. I certainly hope the mid-level employees summarizing data are cognizant that this matter is not going away quietly, and that inappropriate “massaging” of data is likely to bite them in the end. But whatever.</p>
<p>What other possibility do you see? Would love to hear it. Do you think that no other RAs missed rounds?</p>
<p>Do you have access to any other information that those of us reading along do not? Otherwise I think scansmom’s post is spot on and the reaction is hyperbole.</p>
<p>JYM, why can’t anyone answer the basic question – is it fair to fire 7 people out of 188 for an offense that many others likely commit, and are under investigation for? Just say yes, you think it is fair, if that is what you think.</p>
<p>Some did answer your question. Others are saying that they are electing to wait for more more information before passing judgement. Why aren’t they allowed to do that?</p>
<p>I must say that I find it very odd that a number of RAs would be summarily fired simply for not making rounds. Warned, certainly. Fired if non=compliance continued, certainly.</p>
<p>The conclusion I reach is that I probably don’t have enough information to know what is really going on.</p>
<p>“Is it fair to fire 7 people out of 188 for an offense that man others likely commit, and are under investigation for?”</p>
<p>I agree with jym that this question has been answered multiple times, in the affirmative, in the negative, and also with “let’s wait until more information is available.”</p>
<p>Multiple people have said that it is fair. Examples that have been used to justify this type of firing are the speeding ticket, porn abuse, etc. Just because the consequences are not applied immediately and universally, does not mean that consequences for breach of contract are automatically unfair the first time they are applied. I tend to agree with this position. </p>
<p>If I get caught for a speeding ticket doing 80 and there was a car ahead of me going 100, I am not going to whine to the judge that it’s not fair because there was never a cop on this stretch of the highway before, and there were 20 other people speeding on the highway that day. Well, I might whine, but I won’t expect that type of an argument to sway the judge.</p>
<p>You say that it was poor business judgment to potentially leave half the RA spots open… that there is a lot of training, etc. I don’t buy this. First of all, how much training is needed to become an RA? Second, how much exposure is really at stake? There are approximately 2 months of school left. Even if there are some risks of going through with massive firing, don’t you think that the decision to do the audit was made with those risks in mind? After all, if the decision was made by Risk Management, you’d think they’d have some concept of managing risk… and there are potentially other risks we are not aware of.</p>
<p>In any case - fair does not always mean universal application of punishment. Some people get punished fairly, while some are left unpunished - that’s life</p>
<p>Novi, I am not so much arguing that the 80 MPH person should not have gotten a ticket, but that administration is enept. There is a difference. A big difference. Parents spend a lot of money to send kids to college and should be able to expect competent management.</p>
<p>My answer is that it was not only fair, but the RAs may have gotten off light.</p>
<p>Yes they are looking to see WHETHER there is a pattern through an analysis of the card swipes, and the results of the wider audit may or may not be able to show that. But there may be other considerations that triggered the audit to begin with. What if the audit does NOT show a similar pattern of missed rounds in other buildings? It may be that there is something unique about the location or layout of this particular cluster of apartments that makes it easier for RAs to slack off on rounds since this particular cluster are not more traditional dorm building (eg a couple of floors in the YMCA which is just a few blocks from campus, smaller already existing apt buildings that the school acquired in recent years as it began a rapid expansion of on campus housing during a period of time when it was transitioning from a commuter college to a residential college…). So another possibility, as has already been mentioned before, is that the school may now be looking at the issue of missed rounds along with other things in order to find ways to improve their system.</p>
<p>I doubt very much that this is some sort of a witch hunt. In my own dealings with school officials a few yrs back when S attended, I found them to be very fair, just and competent (and his situation makes this really look like nothing more than a slap on the wrist, since it involved damage to fire safety equipment, albeit unintentional ;). Remember zero tolerance? Two options, suspension or expulsion. Actually a third, deferred suspension where students can still attend classes but are kicked out of the dorms and cannot enter other dorms other than the dining halls which are in two of the freshman dorms. Very isolating and lonely experience for a kid with Aspergers… Interestingly they took some of the ideas he suggested the following year to improve and revise some of the dorm rules (he had to do a research paper comparing housing rules at other schools and was able to point out ways NEU could improve, at the same time he also recognized that some schools have rules that even he thought were too lenient. I mentioned he was now much wiser…)</p>
<p>But i could be completely wrong of course–too soon to tell! ;)</p>
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<p>Given the risk and cost of what they are doing now, it is likely that there is a “back story” involving a much higher risk (that they are attempting to mitigate with what they are doing now) that no one is talking about now.</p>
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<p>Yes as I’ve said. </p>
<p>Not only do I think it’s fair, but I’ll also add, I think it’s easy, it’s quick, it’s prudent and it’s effective. </p>
<p>You set a strong example for the other 181, and you retain the staff that you paid to train. Maybe they had 7 trained alternates available that could take over for the ones that were fired, or maybe they will just divide the duties of the 7 over the remaining 181. Not really unreasonable. </p>
<p>They could have pulled names out of a hat and it would still be fair. </p>
<p>Again, these are business objectives.</p>
<p>If I was an RA who was bringing charges against NEU for wrongful termination in this circumstance, I would be relieved that none of you would be eligible to sit as jurors on my case, due to your discussion here. And I greatly appreciate the importance of picking impartial jurors, who can keep an open mind and sort through the facts as presented by both sides of the aisle. Time will tell if this ends up in court. The wheels of justice move slowly. Patience, not speculation, is key. Have a nice weekend everyone. :)</p>
<p>Yes it is fair, effective and just. 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Whether or not everyone of the other RAs not fired did or did not perform their rounds doesn’t change the fact that these 7 didn’t.</p>
<p>I was not aware that college RAs had any real duties other than occupy a bigger room.</p>
<p>The semester ends in about a month there though that doesn’t mean the dorms are empty ( some students probably stay during summer co-op )
A lot of this thread is filled with comments based on speculation . The administration may or may not be showing poor management but none of us really know. </p>
<p>I prefer to wait to pass judgement until the facts are out there , and not just from one article in a student publication .
I suspect there is more to this story than just a few missed rounds from RAs.</p>
<p>There was a pretty hot topic here on CC about a month ago . The outrage ( before all of the facts were reported from several media sources ) was rampant. If the story HAD been what so many thought from initial reports, it would have been hard to accept…once the dust settled and facts emerged, it turned out to NOT be what was initially reported.
That’s why I take a more wait and see approach. I might take a different tone if one of my own children was involved .
There is an old saying , " Rumor is the only thing that gets thicker when you spread it "</p>
<p>Misinformation on CC. You must be mistaken lje. This is the last bastion of absolute certainty, please don’t take THAT away from me.</p>
<p>I noticed that a couple of times in the past week a reporter from the Boston Globe posted there wanting students to contact her because she wanted to do a story on it. My understanding is that the RAs are reluctant to contact her, because they really are (were?) hoping that the procedures and policies put into place by the university (ie. the appeals process) would settle the issues in an above-board, transparent manner. They want to show respect for the university’s decision-making process and all they want is to keep their jobs and show they can be good RAs. While a couple I think may have given up, several more think they do deserve a second chance to show what they contribute to the university (and also feel that the methods used to compile evidence against them were faulty and inaccurate). They do not want to “tattle” to the press, because they all obviously love being NEU students, or they wouldn’t have sought the RA jobs in the first place. </p>
<p>The keeping-it-in house preference must be Northeastern’s too, as the admin sent an e-mail to the entire RA staff just a few days ago asking them not to speak with the press and directing them to forward press inquiries to a specific Dean at the university.</p>
<p>So, I am not sure how much more we will eventually learn…</p>
<p>Regarding what prompted the audits in the first place: </p>
<p>The fired RAs are also in the dark about what prompted the audits. They too wondered whether there was some bad incident on campus that they missed and were possibly responsible for, and several were far more worried that someone had been injured or ill or harmed on their watch than they were about the firings, and I do think that comes from a general sense of responsibility and caring about their residents rather than concern they might be sued. (I’m sure the more cynical of you will think otherwise, but again, I come from a place of knowing the true nature of at least one of them, so you can take it or leave it). Several of the RAs had goodbye meetings with their residents where there were many tears shed, and tremendous, nearly universal support for their RAs by the residents.</p>
<p>A couple of them, as well as their friends and retained RAs, have spent hours poring over published police and campus security reports, news reports from the general Boston area, etc., trying to see if something happened anywhere around the NEU community that they might have missed. They came up with nothing and, as kayf noted, there so far appears to be no campus gossip or talk about any students who have been harmed or injured over several weeks prior to the audits. </p>
<p>I do think that maybe, as someone posted several pages back, the impetus may have been the hiring of a new risk manager at the university – that does make a lot of sense from a timing perspective, I think.</p>
<p>On the one hand, we have kayf wondering how it is good business practice, not to mention fair, for a handful of employees to be fired for – allegedly(!) – not performing a task that presumably the majority of employees also did not complete, while the remaining employees get off with no consequences (except double duty, in some instances, possibly leaving the resident/customers at much greater risk). Poor morale, poor team building, poor business practice if your intention is to maintain a positive, well-oiled company.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we have classic rocker dad saying it would have been just as fair to simply pick names out of a hat and fire the first 7 that come out of the hat, out of the 188 names in there. (But at least he acknowledges that the purpose would be to set an example).</p>
<p>The majority here seem to agree with rocker dad. I am admittedly biased, but I just can’t wrap my head around that. How a business person thinks that’s good business and the way to best treat employees, when there are SO many other alternatives?</p>