The Residence Hall Association began its first Town Hall meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 3.
Without delay, RHA introduced their leadership team and begun to share news at the highly anticipated meeting.
Linda Inman, Director of Housing, publicly announced the building of a new residence hall coming to N.C. A&T’s campus.
The residence hall will be located across the street from Harrison Auditorium and will be five stories high with an estimate of 425 beds, according to Inman. The building is also said to be suite-style with some additional private rooms and apartment spaces
“It is set to break ground around January or February of 2019, and scheduled to open in the fall of 2020,” said Inman.
The residence hall will also feature a common area space with a kitchen, game room and movie room on the first floor named “The Hub.” This hall will also include retail spaces with new concepts from the current stores and restaurants N.C.A&T utilizes.
These amenities, except for retail, will only be available to students that live in the hall, but there will be conference rooms available to all students for utilization.
SGA and RHA will be involved in the interior design of the building. Those meetings have already begun to occur in efforts to allow students to be involved in the process.
Subjects including the name of the hall, the cost to students, or availability to only honors students have not yet been decided.
Another topic discussed included the inclusion of the “Faculty in Residence” program. This would allow one faculty member to reside in the residence hall and create programs.
Before RHA opened the meeting for questions and concerns from students, Vanessa Whitaker, Hall Director, discussed the subject of Title IX in response to a question sent to her through email concerning the topic.
Whitaker reminded students of the location of the Title IX office as well as her own. and stressed how important it was for students to know who to contact about this issue. She made sure students understood the staff took sexual assault, stalking and discrimination serious, and action would be taken.
“I thought it would be important that I share this information because if something happens, we need to know and if you do not want to share with a student staff, that is fine too,” said Whitaker.
Students then expressed concerns about their specific residence halls. Alicia Blackmen, Vice President of Aggies Suites F, discussed the mold in the air condition units.
“The old air condition units make me sick when mold builds up inside of it. I feel like it should be replaced. Also, as far as maintenance coming out to fix our problems, I still haven’t gotten my problem fixed,” said Blackmen.
Inman provided ideas in the discussion of the protocol for maintenance related issues. Inman promised to stay back after the meeting to see if she could help speed up the process for Blackmen.
After the conclusion of the meeting, more staff heard concerns from other students and attempted to work through them.
RHA Town hall meetings are open to all students. Notifications for future dates of the meetings will be released via email from Jonathan Smith, the apartment manager.
