<p>Why is it one strike? If you missed one round, it is one strike. If you missed one month of rounds, you were AWOL from the job and DESERVED to be fired. Why is this any different from working at a McDonalds or Taco Bell for a high school student where if one does not show up without notice/cause, they are done.</p>
<p>What mini is saying makes perfect sense - appeasement so a lawsuit wont take place which means heads needed to roll. A show of an audit to show they are taking the matter seriously (after Sandusky, all universities are in a zero tolerance zone for any harmful acts being ignored on campus) while the school year ends and all dorms are vacated.</p>
<p>IF ALL this does is make it more likely that RAs will not skip doing their required rounds in the future, that alone is a good outcome, IMO.</p>
<p>The fact that other students may learn a lesson – to** take job responsibilities seriously **-- is an even better outcome – again, IMO. </p>
<p>People lose jobs without warnings all the time. I have lived long enough to have witnessed many, many such examples. Nobody should think that this can’t happen. </p>
<p>If my kid had such a lax attitude about a job responsibility I would be very concerned about his future in the work world.</p>
<p>Jem, do you think that fairness would dictate the dismissal of the RAs within the large, remaining group of RAs, if they are shown to have also missed the same number of rounds as the first smaller group,</p>
<p>You know, I usually side with the underdog, but in this case, business is business. </p>
<p>People, adults, didn’t do the job that they were paid for. IMHO, the only reason the rest of the RAs weren’t fired is because NEU needs the RAs and can’t afford to retrain new people at this point in the year. Their action does put the rest of the RAs and future RAs on notice that there are consequences to slacking, and doesn’t totally decimate the RA population. </p>
<p>Whether some RAs got fired and some didn’t doesn’t matter. I think they could have pulled some names out of a hat and it would be just fine. </p>
<p>None of this was for the educational benefit of those fired, it was to serve as a warning to those who weren’t.</p>
<p>I don’t understand this. They are ALL out of jobs in a few weeks. They may not get a job next year if they reapply next year if they were found to be lacking but they will not have jobs anyway at the end of the term.</p>
<p>The issue never was that these people were losing their jobs. It was that 90 people would be thrown out on the street with no place to stay which does not seem to be the case since they are being provided alternative arrangements. Moreover, it was minor number like 7 people and if one of them was not a friend of a child of a poster, no one on CC would have ever heard of someone losing their room.</p>
<p>Not having to pay for room is a privilege that they lost. big deal.</p>
<p>Classic, I suspect you are correct, and this is why I think very little of Northeastern admin people. They screwed up. Yep, as much as the RAs did. They were not monitoring employees, it got out of hand, and they took a crummy way out. IMHO, the right thing would be for the President or Dean of Student Affairs to IMMEDIATELY rescind the firings and say what these people did was wrong, but we over-reacted. Going forward this will not be tolerated. I have a lot more respect for anyone who can admit a buearacratic blunder, and do the right thing. </p>
<p>Right now, the RAs may not look great, but Northeastern looks a lot worse.</p>
<p>Tx – it doesn’t really matter how people found out.</p>
<p>^ Every poster on this forum is entitled to his or her opinion, but I am genuinely taken aback by some of the reactions to this issue. Do those who are upset at the administration feel that the RAs who shirked their contracted duty (for which they were being compensated) were not in the wrong?</p>
<p>I simply don’t get being mad at the administration (who have, perhaps belatedly, attempted to address a problem) and not having an issue with the clear negligence of the RAs who were failing to perform a very clear, routine, and simple job requirement.</p>
At a well-managed business, where employees are considered (and treated) as more than a bunch of easily-replaceable cogs in a machine, at the very least a discussion would have happened after the very first time. </p>
<p>I think it’s important to note that Massachusetts is an at will state when it comes to employment. What that means is that, barring discrimination against individuals or groups of individuals in a protected class such as women, older employees, employees with identified disabilities, and members of certain racial groups, an employer can let an employee go for any reason at any time. Even with a contract, there is no legal obligation to be fair, or to treat everyone equally, as long as that unequal treatment isn’t discrimination.</p>
<p>I also think that the police officer analogy is a bad one. A better analogy might be that the police get a complaint – people are speeding on First Street. So they go out, and set up a speed trap on First. They catch everyone they can, but there are plenty of people who still get by. Maybe the Officer took a bathroom break, or they only covered 2 8 hour shifts in a 24 hour periods, or maybe a car sped by while the Officer had put down his radar gun to pull over other cars. In addition, there are still cars speeding on Second Street, and Third Street, all without consequences. Does that mean the officer was in the wrong? That he shouldn’t have written those tickets? No, it doesn’t. </p>
<p>This situation is entirely different from an officer looking the other way as white drivers go by, or otherwise discriminating. With limited resources, the officer applied them where he thought they would do the most good, based on citizen complaints. </p>
<p>Perhaps NEU received complaints. They didn’t have to be based on tragedies, it could have been something much more benign like a helicopter mom whose kid was throwing up with the stomach flu and commented that they couldn’t find the RA for advice. Once they had those complaints, the responsible thing was to act. Liability concerns will tell you to address the concerns you know about first. Once they realized there was a problem, they took action to solve it, while broadening their investigation.</p>
<p>It is a 9 month job. For all we know they do the job well for one semester, look around, find people slacking off and also figure out no one ever gets fired for not doing the job. So it changed and a few heads rolled.</p>
<p>Frankly, I would make an example of few RAs not taking the security threat seriously than have an incident happen and lose my own job if I was their manager.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is questioning whether NEU has right to fire the RAs.</p>
<p>The question is whether, considering that enforcement of this particular area of their job duties has not been a priority or has been out-and out ignored by the school for years, chopping of heads is the best and most appropriate response.</p>
<p>Call me naive, but I’d like to think our institutions of higher learning are a cut above Taco Bell in how they manage their employees.</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>Well perhaps the door of the specific room they had been sleeping in…</p>
<p>Yes, Northeastern does have a one strike/zero tolerance rule - WHEN IT RELATES TO INFRACTIONS THAT DIRECTLY EFFECT/COULD EFFECT THE SAFETY OF ITS STUDENTS</p>
<p>(Both I - and my now much wiser S - know this from personal experience )</p>
<p>You are kidding, right? The 4 Saban " kicked off" the team were arrested for assault and fraudulent use of a credit card. Hardly comparing apples to apples. </p>
<p>BTW…the same 4 were asked to leave the school, not just the team. </p>
<p>I agree with scansmom (I don’t know if her son was an RA who is impacted?) that zero tolerance policy to ensure the safety of their students trumps everything else, including small or large scale firings. </p>
<p>More memos warning people to do their jobs just wont be the same.</p>
<p>“You are kidding, right? The 4 Saban " kicked off” the team were arrested for assault and fraudulent use of a credit card. Hardly comparing apples to apples. </p>
<p>BTW…the same 4 were asked to leave the school, not just the team.
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<p>If they were really really good, they would have been suspended for a couple of months in summer when it does not impact the team. College teams have lot more people with far worse offenses.</p>
<p>“Rice said that in her four years as an RA,”</p>
<p>How do these people last that long? They get to be RAs as freshmen?</p>
<p>Oh good grief, it’s completely IRRELEVANT whether RA’s in other schools are required to do rounds. The RA’s at NEU were supposed to. They didn’t. And not just an oopsie-miss here and there, but systematically and frequently. In doing so, they expose the school to serious liability per Texaspg’s post. Why the “fault” lies with NEU admin is beyond me.</p>
<p>Perhaps they trusted the RA’s too much and thought they were a bunch of decent, hard-working kids who took their responsibilities seriously, instead of a bunch of slackers who repeatedly - not once in a blue moon, but repeatedly - shirked the responsibilities that they were being paid for. Sorry, it’s the NEU student RA’s who look bad here, not the administration. It’s insane to suggest that with such egregious behavior, they should just slap hands.</p>
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