Due to the author’s request to be granted anonymity for their letter, “The Secret Life of Your RA,” and as part of ensuring that The Spectator does its due diligence to ensure that the claims made can be grounded in commonality between different experiences that both corroborate and add context to the issues that are raised in the letter, we took it upon ourselves to speak with two former RAs who were able to provide support for different claims made in this letter. Housing and Residence Life (HRL) was also given the opportunity to respond.
“All levels of HRL leadership insist that we are people first, students second and RAs third. The work the position requires cannot be fulfilled if this is adhered to, however. I always felt like I had to be an RA before I was anything else if I wanted to stay employed and housed,” Rhy Mack, a fourth-year creative writing major, wrote to The Spectator.
Mack served consecutively as an RA for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years. They left the position before the 2024-2025 academic year due to health concerns and the impact of the RA position on their health. They specified that their direct supervisors always had their best interests in mind, noting that they were often encouraged to prioritize both their physical and mental health. However, Mack found that the structure and workload of the position were incompatible with efforts of support.
“I was diagnosed with patellofemoral syndrome in 2024, a diagnosis I did not share with my supervisors. I did, however, not keep it a secret that I had bad knees and experienced a lot of knee pain. This pain began not long after I began the position in 2022, when I was conducting outreach in eight buildings per shift,” Mack wrote. “Many shifts and thousands of stairs later, my knees began to deteriorate. I kept the pain to myself for a while, as I did not want to have to shift more work to my coworkers after one team member left the position and another was seriously injured. When I did become vocal about my pain, my coworkers stepped up to help me during rounds and did the stairs I couldn’t, but not much could be done that wouldn’t overburden them by higher-ups.”
During their time as an RA, Mack did not feel supported by the executive staff, going on to say that those in higher positions are so removed from RAs by both time and salary that they felt they did not understand the amount of work required for the role.
Although HRL functions as a team, RAs have more frequent interactions with the senior team, who are grouped together based on the buildings they are assigned to and the area in which those buildings fall.
Genny Sheara, a former RA and Seattle U alumna, echoed Mack’s sentiment regarding the difficulties surrounding security and a sense of comfort in the role. According to Sheara, many RAs apply for the benefit of provided housing, including themselves. However, the fear of losing that benefit conflicts with the ability to comfortably voice discomfort with certain responsibilities or frustrations.
“You put RAs in a difficult situation where they’re deciding between their ability to represent themselves to HRL if there is any kind of conflict, and they’re putting up the risk of losing their housing for a year. I think that in the contract, at least, I was made really nervous because I was like, you know, at this snap of a finger, I could lose my job, and then I would be homeless? I think the supervisors were very understanding of that, but I think maybe the people who are making decisions about how the system is and how that hiring process is, they just need to be cognizant of the fact that you’re primarily drawing from students who need you for housing and because of that, they’re going to have a more limited ability to give feedback,” Sheara said.
When asked for comment on claims that students’ feedback was not being properly heard or implemented, and that the creation of the student leader advisory board never came to fruition, HRL responded:
“The HRL leadership and senior team share the desire to return to a student leader advisory board. The invitation to apply to serve on the HRL Student Leader Community Council (SLCC) went live in September 2025 with full details about the purpose, outcomes and roles for engagement with the council. In addition to a follow-up email, Senior Team supervisors were asked to actively promote the SLCC and consider exploring ways to identify two community representatives. Ultimately, four applications out of 115 student leaders were submitted. Based on informal feedback from student leaders and Senior Team members, the HRL leadership decided to explore different opportunities to remain attentive to the ideas and needs of student leaders. These insights are shared weekly and, in some instances, daily, with senior HRL leadership partners. The HRL leadership remains open to ideas and proposed solutions to challenges and works to make changes when possible.”
When asked for comment on RAs’ disability accommodations and struggles, HRL responded:
“When HRL becomes aware of accommodation inquiries, we partner with the Office of Disability Services. The professional staff in the Office of Disabilities engage with students directly and consult with HRL to confirm specific departmental procedures and essential requirements of the specific position. Accommodations are determined on a case-by-case basis through an interactive process as required under federal disability laws. As an essential function of the RA role, RAs are required to complete duty rounds in pairs for safety and for proper incident follow-up. This has always been an expectation of the position within the department and is outlined in depth during formation and training sessions in September when student leaders go over duty and outreach response. Given this essential function of the position and for the safety of all students, we are not able to alter this expectation as it fundamentally changes the essential functions of the position and is not considered a reasonable accommodation.”
