<p>Perhaps the trigger incident, if there was such an incident, was last fall, but a threatened lawsuit only showed up more recently?</p>
<p>If there was no trigger incident in the time that the current batch of RAs was employed, then it would be very odd to go from lax supervision to zero tolerance more quickly than a university administration typically moves, and with the resulting questions, bad rumors, and wrongful termination lawsuit risks that any risk manager would not want to take unless it is in mitigation of an even larger risk.</p>
<p>The hiring of the new risk manager may itself have been in reaction to an incident.</p>
<p>Perhaps the trigger incident is the hiring of the new head of risk.</p>
<p>Perhaps the trigger incident caused the hiring of the new head of risk.</p>
<p>Actually, I don’t know about you guys, but when a new head of “anything” comes on board, there are almost invariably shake-ups of some sort of another.</p>
<p>We may never know. Perhaps the kids will win on appeal.</p>
<p>The trigger incident could have been a complaint from a parent who is a big name donor.</p>
<p>ETA: I’m falling into cynicism. The incident could have been a minor complaint form a parent, or a student. When it was investigated, the school discovered a larger pattern.</p>
<p>The complaint doesn’t have to have been newsworthy. A helicopter mom complains because her snowflake is sick in his dorm room, and can’t find an RA to get advice . . .</p>
<p>The incident may be fully covered by medical confidentiality, and the student affected doesn’t want it known (that it is his parents who made the inquiry, or complaint.)</p>
<p>Doesn’t matter. And the RAs may be tightlipped as part of an arrangement whereby it won’t affect future references or their employment record. Would be very, very fair under the circumstances.</p>
<p>Or the complaint could have come from the 7 remaining RA’s who finally got fed up with covering for their coworkers who were shirking their responsibilities. </p>
<p>What kind of website link is “prohibited” by CC? Certainly not the Boston Globe website.</p>
<p>Some sites are automatically filtered out if they have been registered as not acceptable.</p>
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<p>yeah, my post #198 with the edited-out link was in reference to the reddit at NEU blog that someone posted early last week (it’s the student on-line blog). My explanation of what the link was also was removed perhaps inadvertently. I read it again yesterday to see if there were any updated student comments, and that’s where I saw the reporter had posted there looking for comments for a story.</p>
<p>tomSr - we are all speculating, but yours is pretty funny. The remaining RAs are, from what I understand, in full support of their cohorts, and with finals approaching, how does it benefit them to have half their staff gone so that their duties have now expanded considerably, stretching them all thin?</p>
<p>Poetgrl - I agree, it does seem that the new risk management hire may well be an impetus of some sort or another. But don’t/shouldn’t shake-ups also (or instead) focus on management and middle management to get at the root of the problem? In this case, perhaps those superiors who did not properly stress to the underlings the crucial nature of the duty rounds (that 5% of duties) and that they be performed with no room for error, or making a point to re-emphasize that, hey, remember this is why duty rounds are so important? Or followed through on ensuring that the rounds were being performed in full compliance with the standards imposed by risk management folks? It seems like I have sat through a million meetings where just this kind of thing (other issues of course) was discussed ad nauseum thanks to risk management :)</p>
<p>In any case, how is it better for that message to come via morale-busting, arbitrary firings? (I’m asking rhetorically, not specifically; I agree with your thought that new risk managers generally mean shake-ups).</p>
<p>"But don’t/shouldn’t shake-ups also (or instead) focus on management and middle management to get at the root of the problem? In this case, perhaps those superiors who did not properly stress to the underlings the crucial nature of the duty rounds (that 5% of duties) and that they be performed with no room for error, or making a point to re-emphasize that, hey, remember this is why duty rounds are so important? "</p>
<p>Depends on the circumstance. Do you think the immediate manager of the porn-downloaded-employee I referenced should be disciplined for apparently not emphasizing to his underlings that hey, you don’t use company wifi to stream porn to your computer? Gosh, it’s his fault too?</p>
<p>Kayf, your question has been asked and answered multiple times. Basically most of us feel it’s fair for people to be fired for dereliction of duties, and no, those firings don’t have to wait until every-single-person who could have conducted the same offense has been thoroughly audited to see whether they, too, should be fired. Much like the police officer can give me a ticket even though he was at the donut shop and missed five other speeders, and much like the porn-downloaded can be fired without waiting to investigate if any other employee downloaded porn. It’s a pretty simple point of view.</p>
<p>Pizza, your analogy is not perfect (not that I think you think it is). According to the school newspaper, the investigation is still continuing. Thus a better analogy might be that the speed gun picked up the speed and licence plates numbers (as the card swipes picked up all in and outs), yet the officer only wrote some tickets (the cost of the ticket being 6 weeks salary, and people who could not pay, would immediately, within 3 days lose license and not be able to work) and now the town is going back and looking at the others as to writing tickets on the others. I can only imagine what would be in the local paper if this were to happen.</p>
<p>Security guards face the same thing. Even workers at regular companies have been fired after their bosses looked at card swipe logs and saw they routinely left work early.</p>
<p>Beolin, virtually all of security guard job is walking rounds. I would estimate that a very small % of RAs job is walking rounds (even going over the question of is this an appopriate task for RAs – walking rounds at 2 AM across public streets).</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how Northeastern University handles the issue next week, when they continue the audit of all RAs.</p>
<p>Does anyone posting here who feels that the RAs are being unfairly treated, think that the RAs did, however, bring this upon themselves? In other words, you may feel that firing them without warnings is an excessive reaction to their not having done their required rounds. But IF this were your kid, what would you be saying to them? “I’ll stand up against your unfair treatment by the administration – they have some nerve!” OR “Did you not realize that you were required to adhere to the contract duties you had signed off on? Why were you not doing your appointed rounds?” OR some combination?</p>
<p>I recall my mother never accepting the excuse that “all the other kids are doing it.” She exected me to behave appropriately re what is right. That is what I expect of my own kids as well. </p>
<p>Just curious about what the fired RA defenders think about this aspect.</p>
<p>What makes you think that walking rounds is a small part of the RA job. Have you been an RA? I haven’t, but when I think of what my RA’s did when I was in college, there was a lot of time spent chatting with students sitting in their suites, building relationships that would lead to them hearing what they needed to hear, and building trust so that people would come to them in need. It involved a lot of noticing problems, big ones like the student in danger of alcohol poisoning, and little ones like the student about to pour a whole bottle of laundry detergent in the washing machine. It involved a lot of stopping by rooms and checking on on students who were sick, or having roommate issues, or whatever.</p>
<p>None of these things can be accomplished without being physically present. If you’re across the street at 2 a.m., you’re not doing your job.</p>
<p>“Walking rounds” was defined as as walking a specific route. The RA could be in her room or a student’s room talking to a troubled student at 2 AM and be deemed non-compliant and end up fired. . The Director of Res Life wants the RAS walking the round, across the street at 2 AM. Yes, the routes go across public streets at 2 AM.</p>
<p>^^ which was probably in the job description. You can think what you want, but the botom line is that there were things the RAs were supposed to do and they didn’t do them. If THEY didn’t think it was right or fair or if it was beyond the scope of their abilities, then they either should not have taken the job or they should have tried, as a group, to discuss it with their superior. Employees cannot simply ignore parts of a job because they don’t want to do those parts for whatever reason. Yes, Res Life Life wanted the RAs doing something at 2 AM…none of the RAs had to take that job. Whether any of us think it’s a fair job for a college student or not is not relevant.</p>
<p>What about the RAs who are in charge of such large dormitories with so many residents that their duty rounds consist of just walking around inside their own dormitories? (There are several dorms like this at NEU). How do you measure that? How can it be proven, absent the key card swipes, that they didn’t just stick their heads out of their rooms and listen for bad noises?</p>
<p>The ones who were fired were staffing an older part of campus with smaller, scattered buildings. So their duty rounds were more complex. And easier to track. Some of them were told that, aside from duty rounds, they were required to be in one of the covered buildings so that they could be close by if an emergency occurred, but they were maybe in a building that was actually closer (physically presence closer) to their own building than the furthest building in the group. It’s a little arbitrary.</p>
<p>JEM - definitely a combination of both, and definitely I agree that because everyone else is doing something (or not doing it), you are supposed to abide by your expected duties. And I also would get all the facts as best I could, for at least my own kid. Some of them feel that the card tracking actually was outright wrong in several instances (they were accused in being in buildings they have never even entered on campus). Or, they didn’t swipe during rounds but were instead allowed into the building they were monitoring by fellow friends/residents. There are camera monitors that show this; why weren’t they reviewed to confirm what the swipe audit was telling admin?</p>