Dorm halls have to be the most essential things on every campus. It allows students to interact with other students, having a place to wind down after a long day, andalso creating great memories throughout the year. With many students living on a floor in the dorms, who is given the task to help guide and direct each student? Well for GU, that honor goes to Resident Chaplaina, or RC for short. Throughout the years I’ve been here at GU I’ve had many RC’s that were able to help me out and also that were just there if you needed to talk. To get a better look at what it’s like to be an RC at GU I sat down with Jairin Schad, who is now my current RC, to talk about what it is like to be an RC in Tenney Basement.
Becoming an RC means that you have multiple responsibilities. It’s a job that you have to take quite seriously, so when asking Schad what made him want to become an RC he said, “There was a spot that opened up over at Hood [last year] and the guy asked me and he thought that [I] would be a good fit for it and so he asked me to do it for him, I did and I loved it. So it was cool to be hanging out with a lot of students that I wouldn’t normally be in the same circles as and everything like that. I’m just kind of get to learn different people’s perspective on things was that it was just cool to hang out with a bunch of different guys that I wouldn’t normally.”
As much as an RC needs to interact with the other residents on the floor, an RC is also tasked with adding their own touch to what they want their floor to look like. On each floor of a hall, you’ll have different themes like maybe a sports theme or a specific movie theme; something that the RC can connect with the other residents on the floor with. Schad decided to go with a memes theme because he felt like that’s something everybody can relate to. “I wanted something that I could, I knew a little bit more about. I thought that it would be pretty accessible to most people…I figured people would know what was going on too. I feel like if I did like Lord of the Rings, not everybody knows about Lord of the Rings, but I feel like memes are pretty accessible, you know?” Even with having things to connect with the other residents about, an RC wants to learn from his fellow residents while also having them learn from him.
Schad wants to get to know people better by being able to talk to more people even while being introverted. “In Tenney it is much different. I had about 40 students over in Hood and this is 19 including my roommate and I, so outside about the space because it’s, you know, it’s kind of like four different rooms aside from ours and then it’s a few different people [in] each room. So it was like compartmentalized I guess in a sense to where I was excited about the people being close to each other already and then being able to kind of bridge those gaps between those rooms and stuff like that. I’m introverted in nature, so for me it’s hard to get super out there and then whenever it’s two people to a room with 44 people, you know, it’s hard. It was hard for me to really always be out there and talking to people.” Even though Schad is introverted he has some choice words if you ever want to be an RC, “Go for it. I think I was scared to ask like about the process for a long time. I really enjoyed my freshman year RC, which is also another big part about what I wanted to do it because I thought he was really cool.”
In the end, RC’s are just like you and me, trying to learn about each other and also help each other out in many ways. So, the next time you see your RC, say hi and get to know them because you might be missing out on someone who is extraordinary.
Media by Dylan Goodyear.
