Three members of the Residence Hall Association will repay individual fees for a November conference at which they later admitted to consuming alcohol, a violation of University housing policy and the conference contract, University Housing officials said Friday.
The Residence Hall Association Council, the student governing body that oversees University residence halls, met Jan. 31 to vote on punishments after RHA President Todd Mann was informed of the violations by Assistant Director of Residence Life John Hollan on Jan. 19.
Mann, a sophomore, said he launched an investigation with RHA National
Communications Coordinator and University sophomore Evan Geier and canceled a retreat planned for Jan. 21-23 in light of the rumored violations.
The investigation lasted five days and resulted in the three students being temporarily suspended from their RHA positions after admitting to the suspected violations, Mann said in a Feb. 2 statement.
The conference, a meeting of the Pacific Affiliate College and University Residence Halls, took place in Arcata, Calif., Nov. 12-14 and was attended by nine
RHA representatives.
The RHA Council ordered the three to repay the cost of attending the conference and to repay the cost of canceling the January
retreat, a total of $160 each, after a two-and-a-half-hour debate during the Jan. 31 meeting.
Conferences are paid with the social fees from residence hall dues, Mann said.
“That’s student money and it needs to be paid back,” Mann said.
The ASUO went through a similar situation after an October retreat to Sunriver, and the RHA looked at the student government’s handling of the situation when deciding how to handle its own. The ASUO discussed paying back student money spent on the annual retreat, but later decided against it because it wouldn’t be feasible to raise the money and because it would send the message that the retreat wasn’t worthwhile.
“We looked at a lot of the mistakes the ASUO has made,” Mann said, though he added that the two situations are different on
many levels.
The students will also go through the judicial affairs process with Chris Loschiavo, director of student judicial affairs, and will be required to design a program “aimed at informing future RHA representatives of the consequences of this type of behavior,” Mann said in the statement.
University Housing officials said they are not able to release the three students’ names because Student Judicial Affairs is handling
the case.
“I think that we handled it very quickly, very stern,” Mann said Friday. “This was a huge situation that reflected very poorly upon our organization … that’s why the Council acted on it quick.”
An incident like this had never occurred before in the RHA so there was no precedent to examine when drafting a course of action, Mann said.
Mike Eyster, director of University Housing and assistant vice president of Student Affairs, said he was impressed with how well the RHA Council handled the situation.
“RHA has been extremely responsible in the way that they’ve responded to this as an organization,” Eyster said.
Hollan said he and Eyster had heard rumors of the violations just a few days before informing Mann of them.
The RHA was left in charge of handling the situation rather than housing officials because of the high level of trust that exists between the RHA and University Housing, Eyster said.
“We have a lot of confidence in their ability to manage themselves and to do the right thing once a problem comes to their attention,” Eyster said.
The RHA requires attendees to pay a portion of the conference fee either through fundraising or their own money to increase the sense of personal investment, Mann said.
Mann said the students were required to pay $53 to attend the conference — an amount that is
included in the $160 repayment.
Eyster, Hollan and Mann all commended the RHA’s handling of the situation and the debate the RHA Council had regarding the punishment process.
Mann said the three individuals were honest during the investigation and are sorry for
what happened.
“No one denied it,” Mann said. “It was simply, this is
what happened.”
Mann said the RHA Council took the situation extremely seriously and discussed many different punishment options, including the students’ resignation from their
positions in the RHA.
“The maturity level of the Council was astonishing to me,” Mann said. “I thought we might get reactions like, ‘Hey, this is the norm, it’s not a big deal.’ I did not
see that.”
Eyster said he never saw a need to intervene in the punishment process because of how well the situation is being handled.
“They did a great job discussing and having conversations with each other,” Hollan said. “They wanted to make sure they all had a chance to look at the different options and examine the impact on the individuals and also on
the organization.”
Although everyone within the organization wishes the violations had never occurred, Eyster and Hollan said, everyone is hopeful that the handling of the situation has resulted in a learning experience for those involved.
“A lot of positive changes will occur within the organization as a result of this,” Hollan said. “The group is very optimistic about moving forward, and I think they’ve got the energy and the drive to do it.”

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