The Residence Hall Association discussed improving attendance at hall council meetings Thursday after coming back from last weekends’ Inter-Residence Hall Association (IRHA) conference at Northern Illinois University.

Mallory Winkeler, the national communications coordinator, said IRHA was very successful.

“It was so much fun, and was so awesome,” she said. “I am so proud of all who attended.”

At IRHA, Eastern’s RHA won the most spirited delegation award.

“This is the third year in a row we have won this,” Winkeler said. “We made a name for ourselves.”

In previous weeks, some of the halls brought up problems with bringing residents to their weekly hall council meetings.

They each had brainstorming sessions to think of ways to fix these attendance problems.

In Weller Hall, representatives have started asking residents to figure out what they want out of hall council and what they want to do at hall council meetings.

Andrews and Pemberton halls both had academic initiatives designed to boost attendance.

Andrews Hall has been having a raffle every other week for those who attend hall council meetings, as well as different themes and programs going on every week and a resident of the month program for those who go to hall council.

Last week’s theme was a “Murder Mystery Night.”

Andrews also had rewards for those who got involved with the different residence hall committees.

Thomas Hall had different games and competitions between floors, such as a game based on the show “Minute to Win It.”

Other RHA representatives are planning events for their halls outside of hall council as well.

Taylor Hall is planning an event called “Pie an e-board member” where people can pay a dollar to throw a pie in the face of an RA, RHA representative, and other members of the executive board of Taylor Hall.

Lincoln Hall is having a belated birthday party for Abraham Lincoln on Monday, and Lawson Hall is hosting a game for their hall called “Are you Smarter than Your RA?” which will pit residents and resident assistants against each other.

Treasurer Kyle Anderson brought up a change in way RHA counts the money raised by the halls for Relay for Life.

In previous weeks, each of the halls has been raising money for Relay for Life by putting coins in jars at their front desks. The halls have been in competition with each other to raise the most money. Adding coins to the jars gives the halls more money, and halls can sabotage each other by adding dollar bills to each other’s jars that will subtract money from each hall’s total.

“We were approached by small and large halls to make the way we count the money more fair,” Anderson said.

They did this by averaging the population of the halls with the money earned, so that the amount of people in each hall would be taken into account when they counted the money raised.

In the lead for these “Coin Wars” is Douglas with 33 cents per resident. Taylor is in second, and Pemberton is in third.

Also brought up at the meeting were the upcoming interviews for Resident Director.

Marc Hudson, director of housing and dining, said the graduate students came from national searches.

“I encourage students leaders to meet the candidates,” he said. “There are 15-20 students applying. and we are competing for these graduate students with schools from around the country.”
Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].