Lynn Chan-Nguyen and Faith Ballesteros, two resident assistants at Sacramento State, at the Public Employment Relations Board office in Sacramento. They back unionization for about 1,400 RAs at CSU campuses.
Credit: Courtesy of the California State University Employees Union
Takeaways:
- The union wants to absorb 1,400 or more resident assistants, who do everything from organizing karaoke nights to navigating health crises. They want more guidance about responsibilities.
- Cal State opposes the bid, claiming it “would have detrimental effects for students.”
- Student RAs typically don’t get paid, but receive benefits like free or reduced-cost housing.
To be a resident assistant (RA) in a college dorm is to be many things at once. The person who hosts university-approved events — and cleans up after nonsanctioned revelry. The person who builds community among students — and mediates between feuding roommates. The designated friend — and emergency first responder to a freshman spiraling into a mental health crisis.
That’s why the students behind the current push to unionize an estimated 1,400 resident assistants in the 23-campus California State University system argue they deserve better workplace protections and stronger guidelines defining their positions. If their bid succeeds, RAs would add to the more than 17,000 other student workers who joined the CSU Employees Union last year.
But CSU is opposing the move. In a letter to state labor authorities, a CSU representative said allowing RAs to join a union would “would have detrimental effects for students” and argued RAs should be considered “live-in student leaders,” not employees.
An RA’s role can include everything from organizing karaoke nights to making sure students know how to apply for food stamps. At CSU, they help manage dorms that encompass more than 67,000 beds. RAs receive no salary but get benefits like free housing or access to a campus meal plan.
“Sometimes we are (students’) therapists, and we’re essentially sitting there and connecting with students, one on one, and we’re talking them through really difficult times,” said Yasamean Zaidi-Dozandeh, an RA at CSU Dominguez Hills. “Sometimes we’re their doctors. We’re sitting there calling 911 for them.”
And it’s a position that can vary widely depending on the dorm’s size and the students it serves. An RA in one building might sleep peacefully while another is jolted awake by middle-of-the-night calls.
The union points out other reasons resident assistants could benefit from labor protections. Because RAs live in dorms, they risk losing their housing if dismissed unfairly, it says. Students interviewed for this story said RAs would be more willing to voice concerns to housing administrators, too, with union backing.
A successful union drive would put Cal State students in the company of RAs who have already organized at Boston University, Wesleyan University, Grinnell College and Georgetown University, among others. Though some colleges have voluntarily recognized such bids, others have resisted. The American Council on Education similarly argued against resident assistant unions in a 2016 amicus brief in a case before the National Labor Relations Board involving RAs at George Washington University.
“RAs often are required to be available around the clock to attend to emergencies. If universities and colleges had to bargain about the ‘hours’ of RAs, it is entirely possible that any agreed-upon hours limits would conflict with real-life emergencies,” an attorney representing the council and other higher education organizations wrote. “Could an RA rely on a union contract’s hours limitation to refuse to assist a depressed student in the middle of the night?”
The board ultimately gave George Washington’s resident assistants the go-ahead to form a union, though a union election planned for 2017 was later canceled.
At CSU, the employee union wants to absorb RAs into its existing unit of student assistants, who include part-time workers at places like campus health centers and libraries. Early last month, the union filed papers arguing that resident assistants share a “community of interest” with student assistants, meaning they have similar working conditions and job duties. CSU is currently negotiating its first contract with student assistants.
In opposing the bid, CSU says the housing and meal credits RAs receive are effectively financial aid, not wages. It argues that converting RAs to employees will jeopardize “peer-to-peer relationships” with student residents. It warns that RAs would need to pay taxes on in-kind perks that can reach nearly $30,000 in value. And it says blending RAs into the existing student assistants unit would “overly complicate ongoing negotiations.”
Finally, CSU argues that one of the reasons some RAs favor a union — a lack of consistency in their duties — is a better reason to reject the union’s claim that they share a community of interest with student assistants. “There are no set ‘duties’ or expectations nor set hours for RAs as a whole. In fact, the only uniform characteristic of RAs is that they live on campus alongside other students,” the letter says.
CSU’s opposition means that RAs will likely have to wait for a few more steps to unfold before state labor officials make a decision on the petition. A union spokesperson said the union disagrees with CSU’s response and expects a hearing before state labor officials to be set.
‘No clear distinction in what our role is’
Lynn Chan-Nguyen decided to work as a resident assistant for one reason: “I really could not afford to go to school without the job.”
Chan-Nguyen, a third-year student at Sacramento State majoring in nutrition, grew up an hour’s drive south in Stockton. If not for the meal plan and housing she gets by being an RA, she probably would have stayed closer to home and taken classes at a local community college rather than enrolling at Sacramento State.
But Chan-Nguyen has found noneconomic reasons to love being an RA, too. She enjoys hosting activities like ice cream socials, which help the upper-division, international and transfer students in the apartment-style housing where she works make new friends.
Still, parts of the position she could do without, like cleaning up vomit or trying to defuse physical altercations. “There’s just no clear distinction in what our role is,” she said. “And a lot of the times, when people do get hired, or when people are first starting off from the job, it is not defined what we’re going to be doing.”
First-time resident assistants only start to grasp how emotionally taxing the role can be during a two-week training at the start of the school year, Chan-Nguyen said.
It’s then that RAs realize they might face a life-or-death test of their counseling skills if called on to help a resident experiencing suicidal ideations or a similar health crisis. A 2019 study found that RAs who encountered a resident engaging in self-harm experience higher levels of burnout than RAs who didn’t have those interactions.
Resident assistant Zaidi-Dozandeh at Dominguez Hills, who supports the union drive, said her first-year on-campus housing experience prompted her to become an RA.
The university’s housing department mishandled an escalating conflict among the students in her three-bedroom apartment, Zaidi-Dozandeh said. As an out-of-state student, however, she felt she had no choice but to return to university housing the following year. She shared her concerns with a staff member — who suggested she use that passion to become an RA.
Zaidi-Dozandeh, a fourth-year computer science major, enjoys connecting student-residents to resources like the school’s food pantry. But the work of an RA can also be vaguely defined, she said, creating miscommunication, inconsistencies, and, ultimately, a worse experience for students who live on campus — a problem as CSU campuses experience enrollment declines.
“The question really is, why are these students leaving housing,” she said, “when in some cases they really don’t have anywhere else to go?”