As a nursing student at Bethel University, Ashley Cushman’s been trained to stay focused and solve problems in an emergency. She’s in a job now, though, that comes with pressures even she’s found intimidating. She’s a resident assistant on campus.
“It has definitely been scary,” Cushman said of helping her peers navigate through crises. Now in her second year as an RA, “it’s still scary, because you never really know what’s going to happen.”
Cushman said she draws strength from fellow RAs, “teammates who know you and know how to support you and come alongside you,” but the work can be taxing and “always with the unknown.”
Resident assistants like Cushman form the backbone of student life on campuses across Minnesota and the country. But what was once a relatively straightforward job has become much more complicated in an era of rising student mental health needs. RAs and their trainers say the demands have never been greater.
“This generation is yearning for community,” said Nick Cedergren, Bethel’s associate dean of residence life. RAs can help students build those ties, he added. At the same time, “I think across all higher ed, mental health and mental health scenarios and mental health cases have gone up,” he added. “I would say Bethel is not immune to those stats and those studies.”
National data show those concerns have grown significantly in the past decade. In its 2014-15 study, the Healthy Minds Network for Research on Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health reported 20 percent of college students dealing with depression overall.
By the 2022-23 report, that percentage had doubled, to 41 percent. Those experiencing “major depression” in that period jumped from 12 to 20 percent.
Observers say those rising needs — and the pressures RAs shoulder — jumped during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Whether you’re on duty or not, in the back of your mind you’re always prepared for something to happen,” said Rose-Marie Athiley, a Hamline University alum who worked as an RA from 2018 to 2021, before and during the pandemic.
“Stuff did happen when you weren’t the one on duty,” she said, “but you were the RA there or you were the RA that people felt comfortable coming to right away, and so the mental load of that, that’s something I, by the end of my three years, I was ready to have that space back in my head.”
‘Piling on responsibilities’
Resident assistants bridge a gap providing resources and support for students and dorm life. They oversee a floor that can be anywhere from 15 to 30 students. They carry out on-duty shifts, making rounds late into the night and are on call every other week for any emergencies.
The job traditionally comes with free room and board, often a critical piece for students trying to afford college. In another era, it was an easier job — running the front desk, shooing away loiters, telling dorm dwellers to turn down the music.
RA life, though, has taken on an outsized role in past years, growing to include responding to crises from sexual assault to mental breakdowns at all hours. They can often be the first contact for students on campus and in crisis.
That’s a massive responsibility for a 20-year-old in charge of a floor of 18-year-olds, said Jason Lynch, an assistant professor at Appalachian State University in North Carolina and national researcher studying the challenges and changing roles of RAs.
“Maybe you’re hearing that story about how one of your residents is homeless, they don’t have a place to go during winter break. Another week you’re checking in on a student that is on suicide watch,” he said. “Maybe another week you’re dealing with a really severe roommate complication, and another week you’re dealing with a domestic violence issue. And so that’s just one RA that could be dealing with all of those problems.”
That alone can be emotionally taxing, “and then you’re asked all this other stuff, creating door decorations, being on call for physical emergencies, doing programming, attending meetings — and they’re also students, right? So they have their own academic and social life balance,” he added. “So you have this sort of competing, this evolution of a role that keeps piling on responsibilities.”
Training sessions for RAs run about two weeks in the summer. They’re typically briefed on campus resources, emergency procedures, self-care and team bonding.
A chunk of the training focuses on policy enforcement and responding to situations that new RAs might have anticipated before signing up for the gig.
“Things happen, right? People don’t always get along. There’s conflicts,” said Torin Akey, who led the residential life office at Minnesota State University Mankato before retiring in August. At Mankato, the training focused on giving RAs, called residential life community advisers, the tools needed to help work with a student “to unpack whatever is going on.”
When he started in the ‘90s, Akey said the summer training for Mankato’s RAs used to be longer but has been cut back over the years.
“As the group that works and connects with almost all first-year students, everyone on campus generally wants some time with CAs, and yet they are human beings who can only learn and understand so much,” Akey said.
That human element — RAs are students, too — can create its own pressures in the dorms.
The work “makes you feel like an adult around kids, but you yourself are a kid,” said Cati Varichak, who worked for a year as an RA at Hamline. “You want to have that same college experience as them. But you, by definition, cannot.”
‘Toughest and most rewarding job’
COVID-19 and the trauma created in those years pushed resident assistants to the breaking point in some colleges across the nation. Post-pandemic, schools are finding ways to better support RAs.
Mankato has found that it works best to get the student community advisors connected to staff.
“We work with our CAs to sort of be first responders, but they’re not the final responder, and they’re not the only responder,” Akey said. “It’s that first point of contact for many students.”
At Bethel, they approach things similarly. The university uses an extensive on-call system with full-time university staff, so RAs are never alone and have someone else to support them through emergencies.
Despite the challenges, Athiley said her three years being an RA at Hamline has helped her better handle stressful situations, communicate efficiently and build relationships. “I built relationships with different people from all over with different backgrounds and that’s a really good skill,” she said. “I still tap into it.”
Akey notes that potential employers often seek out former RAs, aware of the pressures they’ve shouldered and the group dynamics they’ve had to navigate.
“Being an RA or being a CA, if you do it well, is, I think, the toughest and most rewarding job somebody can have on campus as a college student. It’s a leadership thing. It stretches folks, it helps them develop skills, and it’s a real common knowledge,” Akey said.
At Bethel, Cushman said she’s looking forward to another year of being an RA. While supporting her peers, she said she learned more about herself.
“The beautiful thing about this role is that you get to kind of check yourself as you’re checking others,” she said. “I think being in a position where you are a leader is that you’re expected to do that for others, but you also have to be a leader to yourself. You have to hold yourself accountable.”
If you or someone else you know needs mental health care call or text 988 to talk with trained counselors who can help.