RHA President Calls for More Students to Get Involved

Residence Hall Association and students living in Frostburg State University residence halls are at odds with each other; students are frustrated with RHA, but those students aren’t engaged in talks with the organization.

“RHA is there for students to provide their input on the resident halls, what the budget is spent on, and activities that goes on with the resident halls.” The RA said she’d been to the Cumberland Hall Haunted House, a zombie run, and Edgewood’s Winter Wonderland, all funded by the RHA.

RHA is funded though the social activities fee budget. Each student pays $25 for this budget, which is not to be confused with the student activities fee which is part of the tuition and fees schedule. From this $25, $5 goes to an RA for their programs and efforts, $5 goes to each resident hall’s hall council, and $15 collected from each student adds up for the general RHA budget.

There is confusion about where RHA money goes at the end of the year “but I feel as though students shouldn’t complain if they don’t come and put their input in where their money is spent.” She feels that it’s hard to get students to come out despite RHA’s best efforts to engage the campus.

Students expect dorms to have a certain quality and certain activities. RHA is in a position where they offer students a prominent role in bettering the dorms, yet a majority of students do not actively participate, say members of RHA.

RHA President Amare Langford-Armstrong chimed in to say ”well for this year’s budget, due to the fact we most likely will not be attending our national scale meeting with all other RHA organizations, it has been pretty high.” He added that there’s a surplus in the programming budget due to RHA members not voting to approve programs with full funding.

“Students still seem to want to lower the amount used in the very few programs that are requesting for money,” said Langford-Armstrong. “The amounts are lowered sometimes based on some pretty simple or arguable reasons, but as long as the voting comes to a majority rule in either way, the lowering or keeping the full amount goes.

“I believe this dispute really is just based on the reasoning and beliefs of the members in each individual hall council. Though, I will say that one idea of trying to fix this dispute is to probably to emphasize the amount of funding we still have for programming as an organization. Another is also to inform our fellow students that when asking for funding for a certain program to try to defend your reasoning on why you chose to pay for those selected items you mention in your packet so the body can get clarification on why such an item is important or needed. Of course it goes without saying make sure your reasoning behind backing up an item makes sense and seems plausible, be honest,” said Langford-Armstrong.