<p>"LOL! These RA’s DIDN"T DO THE JOB THEY WERE HIRED TO DO - and not just the occasional slip-up, but a pretty systematic lack of doing it - and we’re supposed to be concerned with the big moral lesson that should be taught to the NEU administration??
The NEU administration wouldn’t have to worry about selectively enforcing the rules if the RA’s just had a work ethic in the first place. "</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, you seem to have definite knowledge of exactly what happened and how the “systematic lack of doing it” is incontrovertibly proven. Is this from your reading of the student newspaper, or do you have other evidence? Your outrage at the RA’s “lack of work ethic” is laughable. You don’t know these kids or anything about their work ethic. It’s great that you are firm in your defense of the university, but with all due respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about. (or if you do, please enlighten us).</p>
<p>Apparently he had to start somewhere, no? I’m not really sure what difference it makes. The amount of excuse-making for the RA’s bad behavior is unbelievable, and it seems to amount to “well, other people did it tooo…”</p>
<p>Pizza, I don’t know if this is excuse making or not, but MY issue is that Northeastern ResLife went off half-cocked, firing people, without understanding the problem. Are they prepared to fire 1/2 the rest of the RAs? Or was it just fire some to make the others tow the line? Does that hit you as good management? MY issue is with really poor administrative people in ResLife. </p>
<p>It makes a lot of difference to me if a school has good administrative people. If not, why not fire them? Do colleges need layer after layer of admin people if they are just making bad decisions?</p>
<p>Texas, the link to the school paper says that only the first traunch of RAs, from one dorm group, was audited, and the results of most are due on April 3. So is your point that some get fired and some don’t becuase of the delay of the administration?</p>
<p>From the paper - </p>
<p>"At press time, most RAs other than the FLYS staff had yet to be informed of the outcome of their audits. Multiple RAs, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the press, said the majority of RAs regularly missed at least some of their rounds.</p>
<p>“They thought it was an isolated incident somehow,” said one RA who still hasn’t heard the results of the audit, noting that most of Northeastern’s 188 RAs were well aware that performance of rounds was often lackluster.</p>
<p>Residence Directors are poring over their staff’s swipe records in search of what McCormick called a “pattern of behavior” at a meeting with one staff this week, and their findings are due to their supervisors April 3"</p>
<p>No, I am saying they will all be gone at the end of the year. So if they don’t want to make more examples, they will let this die and pick up next year to show that people need to take their job seriously.</p>
<p>It is a teaching tool for the next crop of RAs in 2013 fall - you will be held accountable.</p>
<p>If a coach wants to enforce discipline on a team, he/she will throw out couple of kids (I think Saban kicked off 4 recently?) so the rest toe the line. This is not that different.</p>
<p>Well Tex, so do you think it is fair, for the same offense, that some people get fired, and some do not? Forget about the RAs, is this good management?</p>
<p>Its a teaching tool for all then, that Northeastern does not value fairness.</p>
<p>Tex, I do not follow much sports, and rarely use sports as a good example of fairness etc. Were all team or many team members doing whatever Saban objected to? Or did he pick the worst four? It certainly appears from the press that he picked the worst offendors (or at least based on what they did, I hope so!)</p>
<p>I am sorry if you don’t see a difference between kicking off 4 kids who were worse than the rest v kicking out a random group without even knowing the behaivor of the others. I am even sorrier that apparently Northeastern doesnt care.</p>
<p>“What is your opinion of Northeastern’s Director of Residential Life who would sample one group of kids, fire half of them, and now is awaiting results on the majority of them?”</p>
<p>this may be a slight mischaracterization if, in fact, a decision was made to conduct an audit on a particular group of RAs for a specific reason, not just as a random sample, and as a result of that audit, it was determined that an even larger campus-wide problem might exist, resulting in another decision to conduct further audits - perhaps they were mostly concerned about one or two RAs and then saw that seven had failded to do their rounds enough times that a wider audit was warranted? We do not know, not even Mannix’s son’s friend… And we also do not know what other steps the school may be taking to investigate a larger problem, if one exists (for instance, the dorms that use keys instead of swipes).</p>
<p>By the way school, spring semeseter ends at the end of April.</p>
<p>IMO it is appropriate that those who were not doing the job they had contracted to do be fired. I am dismayed that anyone would think otherwise, if only as a matter of personal responsibility on the part of those given a position that is, to some extent, supposed to serve as a role model.</p>
<p>And re those other RAs who are being, possibly, equally as lax, well, perhaps it will catch up with them this year and perhaps not. Not all traffic violators, speeders, etc. get caught but that does not mean those who do get caught are not guilty/should not be punished.</p>
<p>Fully agree with texaspg that “people need to take their job seriously.” Good lesson for these kids, as well as other RAs and other students, to learn. IMO</p>
<p>Anything else is being lax and/or enabling.</p>
<p>My son attended another college and one of his friends was an RA and I recall my son mentioning that some nights when his RA friend was on duty, my son would keep him company as he did his rounds. It was part of the job.</p>
<p>We knew another kid who had an RA position and lost it for smoking pot in her room. Even her parents had no issue with the school taking the position from her and replacing her with someone else who, it was hoped, would abide by the rules she should have been enforcing.</p>
<p>As for the question about management responsibility, perhaps that is an issue as well, but my opinion is that to give a pass to the students who were clearly identified as not doing their jobs would be significantly worse than not having caught on to the problems right away. Better late than never. Hopefully EVERYONE on the campus, as well as those who read/hear about the issue, can learn from this experience.</p>
<p>Tex, if I had to fire people to get performance from others, I would be out of a job. Or at least, I would have to show, I set a good example, I issued warnings, listened if people said job was unworkable. You get it. That is why I do not think much of Northeastern administration. I hope this is not what they teach in the business school.</p>
<p>JEM – at this point, I do not care so much about the RAs. I would like to see more responsiblity shown by school administration. I think head of ResLife should be fired. </p>
<p>I also see a difference between this and smoking pot in the room.</p>
<p>I see no evidence that the intent is to “set an example”. I see no evidence that these RAs were simply “randomly sampled”. I see no evidence that NEU acted unfairly, or even particularly harshly. </p>
<p>And I have no idea what prompted the audit. All I have is a squibb from a student newspaper that is less than complete (and I;m being charitable.)</p>
<p>There is an area on campus where people are usually hanging out and doing drugs. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>A kid overdosed one day and everyone else walked away from that area.</p></li>
<li><p>An RA was supposed to visit that area at 10 PM and 2 AM. The RA was found to have not been there for the past month.</p></li>
<li><p>The kid went into a coma and later died.</p></li>
<li><p>The school is sued by the parents for 20 million for negligence.</p></li>
<li><p>The school produces the contract with the RA and says the RA was negligent.</p></li>
<li><p>The lawyer for the kid’s parents gets the logs of the RA rounds and proves no one ever monitored these RAs.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Does anyone think the school has a shot at winning this negligence lawsuit?</p>
<p>Folks keep repeating an untrue statement that Mannix made initially, recanted, but the cat is out of the bag–D=NEU DID NOT FIRE HALF ITS RA’s!! They fired half of one team–SEVEN of them!!!</p>
<p>Mad, of the first group audited, 1/2 were let go. The other audits are in progress. No need to shout. </p>
<p>Texas – Maybe the entire contracts need re-thinking. Maybe that is the error. I am not aware of RAs in any other schools being required to do rounds. But even so, how about issuing warnings before being fired?</p>
IMO the school administration belatedly showed some responsibility when the issue of RAs not doing their jobs was addressed firmly.</p>
<p>I would like to see more appreciation of responsibility/accountability shown by people who are aghast at RAs who do not do their jobs losing those jobs! Natural consequences, IMO. </p>
<p>“I also see a difference between this and smoking pot in the room.” Did anyone say there was **no **difference? Of course there is a difference, but I used it as another example of a RA breaking a contract and having to accept the consequences – without a warning process, etc. The warning should have come from the student’s own brain before she took such action in violation of her employment contract.</p>
<p>JEM, so if some students were fired for missing rounds (whatever the number of rounds missed was), when the audits are complete, should all students who missed also be fired?</p>
<p>If some employees get warnings before termination at NEU, should only students not get warnings?</p>
<p>Do some of you really think the best and most appropriate response to this situation was to be fired?</p>
<p>One strike and you’re out? Zero tolerance? No warnings, no performance review meetings, no additional training, no communication emphasizing the point? Just, you screw up and are shown the door?</p>
<p>Wow.</p>
<p>I know there are crappy businesses that work this way, but I am glad I don’t work for one that manages by fear and intimidation. I hope none of you ever screw up.</p>
<p>I think being an RA is already a tough job, being the first layer between the students and the administration. The RAs at UMass Amherst felt so abused that they unionized. What does that tell you?</p>
<p>I can’t see how this will lead to a better job being done by the RAs. Sure, none will ever miss a round again out of fear of being fired. But this will trickle down into other aspects of the job. All zero-tolerance and one-strike policies do is remove using judgment when doing your job, and I don’t think this ever leads to an optimal (or even desirable) outcome.</p>
<p>“Does anyone think the school has a shot at winning this negligence lawsuit?”</p>
<p>No. Not a chance in hell. But soften it a little bit - more likely an OD (or an accident) that didn’t cause death. The victim got to the hospital, and is doing fine. But the parents are now asking “questions”. So the university is pursuing the questions, and this is what they found. Risk management says it won’t likely help in the event of a lawsuit, but might mitigate the damages. The case will be settled out of court - the only open questions are the amount, the extent of the non-disclosure clause, and university procedures.</p>
<p>Makes very good sense to me. A very desirable outcome for the university; no one died; and the RAs are very minimally punished. Very fair. Everybody wins (unless particular RAs get sued.) And if it looks like the university is setting an example (even though they are not), so much the better.</p>