Alex Gervais ’28
Managing Editor
“They’re just trying to get as much out of us for as cheaply as possible” – a Trinity RA.
On April 23, 1971, Trinity announced its first Residential Advisor (RA) program. The program replaced a one-year attempt at Residential Coordinators, and a former system of Junior Advisors who played the role of a modern day RA, but had no concrete responsibilities. The college’s first RAs were paid $500 to be put towards room and board (71% of the cost of on-campus housing in 1971), were expected to give up “limited weekends” and attend weekly meetings.
Today, RAs at Trinity today make $6000 a year in biweekly stipends (along with $100 in Bantam Bucks) and have a broad range of responsibilities listed in their contract, including doing rounds of their residential communities, remaining on-call for assigned nights from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., running programming in their building and meeting weekly with housing staff. According to the contract, these duties are intended to sum up to 10 hours a week when aggregated across the entire academic year.
To better understand the true scope of these responsibilities, the Tripod spoke to seven RAs in on background interviews. The Tripod attempted to reach out to more, but many declined to speak with the Tripod for fear of retribution from Trinity’s Housing office (also known as the Bantam Network). The Tripod has omitted the names of the RAs interviewed in an effort to protect their on-campus employment.
Newly this year, RAs are required to meet with each of their residents for one-on-one conversations early in the semester. These conversations were initially intended to be monthly, but were changed to be on a semester basis after complaints from RAs that monthly conversations would monopolize their time. RAs are expected to attempt to make contact for conversations three times, and can only stop initiating contact after a third failed attempt. These conversations were not specifically included in the RA contract, one RA saying about them: “going into this, I had no idea this would happen.” Another felt that they were “spending all day just knocking on people’s doors, hoping for [an] answer,” and that “[residents] don’t want to talk, I can’t force them to.”
The conversations are intended to be unscripted and “organic,” but RAs must file a report on Housing’s internal system after each conversation and ask specific questions. If an RA refers a resident to resources like the Counseling Center, they must include that in their report.
RA compensation does not include the cost of on-campus housing. In the past, Housing has been reluctant to include free room-and-board as a part of the RA pay structure as some RAs have different scholarship funds they can pull from that may help cover the cost of housing, however current RAs consistently expressed frustration with paying for housing. One RA in speaking about a conversation with a first-year parent said: “I honestly didn’t have the heart to tell them that the pay that I get for being an RA is not even half of what it costs to pay for housing at this school.” Another asserted: “I don’t think the RA pay necessarily helps all that much either because I don’t think they allow for the stipend to go towards [the] cost of attendance.”
In calculations done by the Tripod, an RA who fully completes their duties will work at least 580 hours over the academic year. This number is inclusive of time spent on-call; the typical RA is on-call two to three nights every two weeks. Trinity’s RA contract stipulates that, “[w]hen on duty, RAs must stay within the assigned neighborhood from the start of the shift at 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM the following day.”
Still, Connecticut law exempts “any individual employed as a head resident or resident assistant by a college or university” from minimum wage requirements. The US Department of Labor’s regulations state: “Students enrolled in bona fide educational programs who are residential assistants and receive reduced room or board charges or tuition credits are not generally considered employees under the [Fair Labor Standards Act]. They therefore are not entitled to minimum wages and overtime under the FLSA.” Trinity RAs do not receive reduced room and board charges or tuition credits, but instead a stipend payment.
The contract also stipulates dates for which RAs must remain on campus, specifically for semester close. Typically, RAs are expected to complete rounds to shut down their building at noon the day after the last day of finals, often staying on-campus until 5 p.m.. The day stated in their contract for the 2026-27 school year is Dec. 23, the last day of finals. This year, RAs have been asked by housing to stay on-campus through Dec. 24, Christmas Eve, to do typical shut down. RAs were initially told that if they left campus before Dec. 24 they would lose their final paycheck of the calendar year, but Housing walked back that decision, instead mandating that RAs stay only until 5 p.m. on Dec. 23 to fulfill their contractual obligation. Multiple RAs credited RLC Jess Gardner for Housing changing that informal mandate. In prior years, RAs have been fully under contract for semester close.
As of publish, RAs have not been issued a new contract that reflects working on Dec. 24 or adding their additional responsibility of one-on-one conversations with residents. The lack of a new, clear contract was reflected by RAs, one asking when on-call if they are “technically paid for those whole hours?” Another said that “a lot of the work that [Housing] wants [RAs] to do this year, it wasn’t in the contract.” The same RA reflected on their position: “it’s no longer become something that I take pride in.”
The Bantam Network, the staff responsible for housing at Trinity and administering the RA program, has shrunk in recent years. In Oct. 2022 there were five employees on staff, including two Residential Life Coordinators (RLCs) and three higher level administrators. At the time the Dean of Student life, Dr. Jody T. Goodman, was also the Director of the Bantam Network. Today, there are only three employees on staff, an associate director and two RLCs. As of publish, the Director of the Bantam Network has remained listed as an open position on Trinity’s job posting site since July 2, as does an RLC position (although at least one RLC position seems to be in a late round interview stage according to sources close to the process). Both of the roles currently do not list a salary, despite a Connecticut law that took effect Oct. 1 stipulating that compensation must be disclosed on job listings. Trinity’s executive leadership team currently has nobody publicly listed with housing, the Bantam Network or residential life as under their umbrella of responsibilities.
Across the NESCAC, RAs have begun collectively bargaining for improved pay and working conditions. Wesleyan and Tufts have unionized their RAs, both represented by OPEIU local 153. Wesleyan’s RAs unionized after flooding the night of first-year move-in at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year forced them to work in emergency conditions, receiving a beach towel as compensation for their extra time worked. Their union, WesUSE (Wesleyan Union of Student Employees), was eventually voluntarily recognized by Wesleyan. WesUSE negotiated RAs a yearly stipend of $13,085.58 for the 2025-26 school year, with a stipulation that stipends would be increased for the 2026-27 school year at the same rate as Wesleyan’s cost-of-attendance. They receive per-diem pay for time worked outside of regularly scheduled hours and receive higher pay upon an RA gaining seniority, a system Trinity phased out this year. The union also negotiated a formal grievance system that involves a third party arbiter if the contract is broken.
While there have been efforts in the past to unionize RAs at Trinity, even as recently as 2025, none have been successful thus far.
The Tripod spoke to Luca D’Agruma, a member of the United Student Labor Action Coalition and a representative for WesUSE. D’Agruma stressed that changes to federal priorities reflect on how colleges and universities interact with their student workers: “Under the Biden administration, they had felt that they needed to respond mostly positively because they knew that they would have a federal government that would stand up with workers and especially student workers… A lot of universities right now don’t want to be seen as enabling the Trump administration’s reckless cruelty and brutality across the country. If a university would oppose their student workers’ basic right to make a decision affecting their working conditions, a right that should be and is at least formally enshrined in federal law, if the university were to challenge that, it would basically be Trinity going to the Trump administration and asking for the Trump administration to attack their own student workers.”
The Tripod reached out multiple times to the Bantam Network requesting interviews and comment on this story and others involving residential life at Trinity. As of publish, the Tripod has not received comment.
If you are an RA or a PRIDE Leader and would like to talk to the Tripod on background about your experience with housing, reach out to Alex Gervais ’28 or Talia Cutler ’27 through a non-Trinity communication method. You can also submit a tip with your name and number through the Tripod’s tip form on our website and an editor will reach out to listen to your story.
