By EMMA RUBIN ’20
On Wednesday, March 11, the day after Mount Holyoke announced its plans to close due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the Office of Residential Life held a routine meeting with Senior Community Advisors (SCAs) and Community Advisors (CAs). But with the mood of the campus and uncertainty many students faced, it was anything but routine.
“They were worried about giving the seniors and the ResLife staff a good send-off at our Wednesday meeting instead of it being all about business,” Luciany Capra ’21, SCA for Brigham Hall, said.
Capra said the meeting left questions open about what the financial future would be for CAs. She remembered the Advisors asking if their stipend would decrease, and the Residential Life staff didn’t have an answer yet. “There wasn’t much of a conversation,” Capra said. “Probably because they didn’t know, but they also didn’t ask us how we would like the situation approached.”
Unlike other student workers, CAs receive a stipend for each academic year rather than hourly pay. They are contracted and paid through the Office of Residential Life rather than the Office of Student Employment. They will lose two paychecks, or four weeks of work, under the current circumstances.
Rachel Alldis, Director of Residential Life, said that a committee of staff decided the Community Advisor position would not continue following this year’s campus closure.
According to Alldis, CAs who were approved to stay on campus may continue in their positions remotely and with hourly pay. “We went from having over 2,000 students on campus to less than 300, so fewer staff were needed to support the on-campus students,” she said.
Capra thinks that remote work could have been a possibility for CAs. Although traditionally they are expected to build a physical community in halls and dorms, Capra thinks they could work to build virtual communities through email check-ins and Zoom events.
“Anybody who is able to do remote work for their jobs should be able to have the option to do that,” Maren McKenna ’21 said. McKenna was the CA for around 20 people who lived on the third floor of Brigham. “Doing check-ins and having somebody who could also connect you to someone from the school, I think that could be a really good resource for people,” they said.
In recent weeks, the College has been working to build a virtual community through its own efforts. Dean of Students Marcella Runell Hall recently asked in a Dean’s Corner newsletter, “What virtual events would you like to see put on for our community in the coming weeks? Do you have any interest in helping make them happen?” The Office of Student Life launched two photo submission virtual events, including “Pets of MHC” and “#mohocares.”
In a letter Capra and three other organizing SCAs sent to the Office of Residential Life and other Mount Holyoke administrators, they wrote, “It is unclear where the stipends were coming from in the College’s budgets, and even following the outbreak of COVID-19, it is nevertheless further unclear why the budget allocated to compensating Residential Life student staff no longer exists.”
In the contract which Community Advisors sign at the start of the year, the compensation clause notes, “If a SCA leaves the position for any reason, they will not receive the portion of their compensation for the time they did not work.” To Capra, that section seems to apply for students who are fired and does not predict the current circumstance. Instead, Capra emphasized one of the final clauses in the contract which states, “This contract is subject to change, but the compensation will not decrease.”
The organizing SCAs are expecting a response from the Office of Residential Life by Friday, April 10.
“A lot of students were relying on those last two paychecks to cover expenses or pay rent,” Capra said. “We at the very least would have wanted transparency about where the funds were going if not to pay us our contracted stipend.”