Bang-a-rang!: My Start as a WHaBaM CA

One of my favorite Red Team cheers starts with a single person yelling "Bang-a-rang!" Those around respond with:

Bang-a-rang!
Ruffio! Red Team Go! Red Team Go-ooooh...Ooh-Oooooooh
Red Team Go!

It is one of my favorite because a simple word-phrase-nonsense can turn into a group uniting around a cheer. And because, as the catalyst, you get to say "bang-a-rang", and who wouldn't like yelling something like that?

After my week of CA (community advisor) training, I began working with my ten RAs in the four buildings of which I am in charge.

How did you become the CA of four buildings, Corinne?

Glad you asked. I was originally hired for three buildings: McGill (the 72-person all-women's building), Welch (the 56-person quiet-living building), and Henderson (the 60-person health-and-wellness building). After getting my list of RAs in the spring while I was in Qatar, I began e-mailing them to see how summer and spring training was going. I had a lot of enthusiasm, but only knew one of the six from working with her previously. The rest - strangers.

Then there were many long, complicated (but correct) rearrangements of the department of Student Life, which eventually led to me gaining another house (Boss House, a 72-person house focused on global studies, leadership, and civic engagement), another RA (Welch needed one), and an arrangement with two housefellows instead of one.

The addition of Boss House came out of a need for a system for cohesiveness on the Hill (where all of my buildings are, also known as the Red Team) and support for the RAs. The additional RA came because staff didn't know how many first-years we had coming in and thus how many RAs might be needed overall. The two housefellows came out of a need to supervise both upperclass and first-year buildings differently.

But back to my wonderful houses that make up WHaBaM (Welch, Henderson, and Boss and McGill).

Boss is a first-year building, and McGill has 40 first-years of its 72 women. One housefellow is focused on those two buildings.

Henderson has 19 first-years and 41 upperclass students. Welch is more skewed, with 11 of the 56 as first-years. One housefellow is focused on these two buildings, in addition to supervising the other upperclass and Greek housefellows.

So really, how did I get this position? Someone had enough faith in me to say, if anyone can do it, Corinne can. I'm not yet pulling my hair out, I only hide from my e-mails every so often, and I can recognize (probably an optimistic estimate of) 75% of the students living in my buildings.

Would you have signed up for this job originally? Are you crazy? Do you think I'm crazy?

Would you trade it in now? No way. There is no part of WHaBaM of which I don't enjoy being a part. I can easily spend two hours going through all 12 floors plus 4 ground floors of all the buildings, chatting with residents who recognize me (and I recognize them!)

I feel honored that Student Life was confident enough (or desperate enough) to give me four buildings. I get to have at least nine meetings a week to work with this job, talk with my RAs, and get support from my housefellows.

I guess the reason I'm writing this post is to brag a bit. My RAs are great. My residents are great. And my year, if it continues in the direction we started it, should be great. I'm just hoping I can continue rising to the challenges of splitting my energy and time across so many divides and coming up with a satisfactory place for people to live and grow.

Bang-a-rang!