Top row: Joshua Baker, Abigail Allen, Faith Martinez
Middle row: RD Alexandria Donkor, Destaysia Wallace, Ashley Simmons
Bottom row: Brianna Marible, Gabriela Santana
By Abigail Allen, Student Village Resident Assistant
SUNY Broome Student Village Resident Assistants (RAs) hit the road on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2018, to go to Stony Brook University in Long Island for a Resident Assistant Conference. RAs Gabriela Santana, Abigail Allen, Joshua Baker, Brianna Marible, Faith Martinez and Destaysia Wallace were selected to go to the conference, along with Residence Hall Associate Ashley Simmons. Before the conference, Santana, Martinez and Baker had a wonderful opportunity to come up with a presentation on “How to Deal with Different Residents” to present at the conference.
After we arrived at the conference at 9 a.m., we sat down at a table together as 21 other schools that were invited arrived and took their seats. Once all the invited schools arrived, we were all led to a giant auditorium where more than 500 RAs from across the state were seated for an opening ceremony. The opening ceremony was led by a residence hall director at Stony Brook, as well as a guest inspirational speaker named Daryl.
Left to right: Faith Martinez, Joshua Baker, Gabriela Santana
After the opening ceremony, the RAs and residence hall directors branched off to attend presentations led by other RDs and RAs from across the state. One of presentations was “Who would you save?” about the diversity among people in this world. After that first presentation, RAs Santana, Baker and Martinez were ready to present their presentation. To begin the presentation, RAs Wallace, Allen, Marible and Simmons lead an icebreaker called Link Up. Link Up is a game where a person tells the group something they like to do, eat or anything else. If someone liked what that person liked, they would link arms. The person at the end of the chain would say something they like until everyone is linked in the end forming a circle.
After the icebreaker, the presentation. Some of the topics discussed during the presentation were:
- Different types of people
- The importance of resident care
- How to handle all the resident types
- Basic principles of care
- Words to use and not to use
Top row: Joshua Baker, Brianna Marible, Abigail Allen, Faith Martinez, Gabriela Santana
Bottom row: Destaysia Wallace, Ashley Simmons
Everybody was very engaged in the presentation and the RAs presenting received great reviews and comments such as, “very engaging,” “a wonderful presentation” and “I really learned a lot from this presentation.” Some RAs from other schools even asked if we could mail the presentation to them for future use and application.
The SUNY Broome RAs went to another presentation afterward about how to mediate conflict between residents. The Stony Brook RA presenters went over topics including:
- Different problems encountered
- How to mediate different types on conflict
- Rules to follow while dealing with conflict
After all the presentations were finished, all the RAs were called back into the auditorium, for a closing ceremony.
Thank you to Stony Brook University for the wonderful opportunity to be able to attend, present at and share our abilities at such an inspiring conference. It gave us the chance to show everyone what SUNY Broome’s RAs can accomplish. It was a wonderful conference and we are so thankful for the opportunity!
