Debate has sprung up around whether or not Residential Assistants are still a necessary aspect of college campuses in the year 2022. Baxter Bearcat himself has deemed Residential Assistants as being “nothing more than glorified freeloaders,” (Binghamton University declined to comment on the veracity of Baxter’s statements). Ultimately, it was with heavy deliberation and soul-searching that University President Harvey Stenger and his investors were finally able to manage a way to terminate the RA program without it coming across to students as merely an ill-conceived cost-cutting maneuver.
The basis behind nixing the Residential Assistant program is simple: what better way to alleviate the Residential Assistants’ perpetual stress by depriving them of room and board? It is policies like these that demonstrate Binghamton University’s unwavering commitment to the mental health and wellbeing of its student body. To that end, the entire program will be cut by next year, and the superfluous RA's previous duties will soon be carried out by over three-hundred students belonging to several specialized residential departments.
For example, one student per living community will be solely responsible for creating a GroupMe for its residents, then populating it with one to three vague motivational quotes a week. Meanwhile, two students per community will be tasked with assisting residents who have locked themselves out of their dorm or apartment; one student will be responsible for actually unlocking the door (by any means necessary, be it paperclips or ID cards slid under the door’s bolt, or sheer, brutal force), as the other makes sure at least sixty to ninety minutes have passed before any real action to open the door is taken. Some students will be in charge of occasionally stocking their community’s lounges with family-size bags of Cheetos and coloring books from Dollar General. There will also be many positions available in the Peer Roommate Mediations Department, which will see students tacitly agreeing with both parties within each roommate dispute, then allowing residents the freedom to handle issues for themselves by ignoring any further complications, thereby absolving the University of any fault.
Perhaps the most important residential department under development at Binghamton University is the Residential Life Phone Operations, where several volunteers will place each and every call to Residential Life on hold for uncertain, randomized periods of time. To that end, an America’s Got Talent style audition will be held next semester across campus to determine which student will create the Residential Life Department’s music-on-hold, as Harvey Stenger prepares to channel his “inner Paula Abdul.”
Many current Residential Assistants have expressed outrage at Binghamton’s new Residential Life policies. Mona Lott is an Undergraduate Residential Assistant at Binghamton University. They are currently stationed in Cayuga, but have received word from a Residential Life email that “they should prepare for the imminent termination of their current living arrangement.” According to Mona, the words “prepare”, “for”, “imminent”, and “termination” were highlighted in the email. Mona had this to say about the University’s decision to remove their position: “My duties as an RA are so intricate and complex that I see no way for three hundred people to cover all of them!” Unfortunately, following these words, we had to cut the interview short as RA Lott had to yell at some Freshmen in the hall outside for forgetting to tape over their suite’s smoke detector.
At press time, Harvey Stenger and Baxter Bearcat were observed playing pong and blaring profane hip-hop music from their fifth-floor suite in Johnson, each drunkenly shouting, “No RAs, no rules!”