By MARIA PAPPAS
STAFF WRITER
In the upcoming year, the Office of Residential Life is looking to work more closely with commuting students for future programs. Kim Russell, dean of Residential Life, wants to link resident assistants (RAs) with commuter assistants (CAs), thereby providing residence halls with commuter liaisons who can help both commuters and residents become more involved in on-campus events.
If RAs and CAs pair up, both groups of students will be able to learn more about events that the Residence Hall Association (RHA) and the Commuting Students’ Association (CSA) throw, as well as about other student-run organizations. Russell hopes that this program will help all students know more about programs, meet new people and get more involved on campus.
Joe Dieguez, FCRH ’14, is a CA who shares this hope with Russell. This year, he and Russell have had multiple meetings with resident directors (RDs) in which they discussed upcoming changes. Dieguez plans to be a CA liaison, meeting with an RA liaison from each freshman residence hall once a month in order to discuss upcoming events.
Dieguez stresses the importance of connecting residents and commuters with one another and promoting awareness of upcoming events. Dieguez says, “I feel that there is a disconnect between [residents and commuters],” and he has personally felt the impact of this disconnect.
He believes that it begins with freshmen, who “stay in a comfort zone and create their core group of friends within the community they are comfortable with.”
Danielle Catinella, FCRH ’15, agrees with Dieguez’s sentiment, saying, “Having been a commuter and now a resident I think it is opportune for residents and commuters to go to programs together so that they can form one Fordham family and merge their two worlds.”
Looking ahead, RAs and CAs have discussed ideas such as an event in which a CA and an RA bring their respective groups of freshman students to lunch on Arthur Avenue.
Programs of this sort would help both residents and commuters get to know the rich cultural community surrounding the Rose Hill campus, as well as provide the students with a chance to meet new people whom they would not have gotten the chance to know otherwise.
Under the guidance of CAs and RAs, whom commuters and residents respectively know personally, these students would feel more comfortable stepping beyond their boundaries and exploring more opportunities at Fordham.
“It is a baby step program that will only grow into bigger scale programs,” says Dieguez.
His next goal is to meet with the RHA boards to talk about the co-sponsoring of events with CSA so that these events can garner higher attendance of students.
The upcoming Thanks-Give-Away event, which was started by CSA, is one example of an event in which commuters and residents are strongly involved.
Dieguez has dreamed of uniting commuters and residents for years, and says, “I want to walk away from this year knowing I started building that bridge to a more connected community between commuters and residents.”
Dieguez, along with Russell and other students, is well on his way to doing so.
