Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Nervous about starting at Michigan State? Worried about your class schedule, living away from home, or where to even start? The Spartan Orientation Station (SOS) is a podcast hosted by New Student Orientation staff and was created by students for students. This podcast will launch twice a week throughout the summer, and each episode will feature a unique interview with campus departments discussing their services, common misconceptions, and fun Spartan engagement opportunities. When you need help at Michigan State, it is okay to signal SOS! Don’t worry – MSU is there for you.
You're listening to the Spartan Orientation Station on Impact 89 FM, the podcast by students or students. Now this week's episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Spartan Orientation Station. Today, we will be talking about the Residence Hall Association or RHA. RHA is MSU's on campus student government, which represents all students living in residence halls. Their mission is to represent the residents of MSU and provide a voice of their concerns. My name is Ava Ignash.
Speaker 2:I'm a recent graduate with a BA in international relations, and I currently work as a student coordinator in the NSO office.
Speaker 3:My name is Mirono Conte, and I am a rising 4th year majoring in urban and regional planning with a minor in international development. And I am also a student coordinator with the NSO office. And to learn more about RHA, we will be speaking with their president, Erin Caldwell. Welcome, Erin.
Speaker 4:Hi. Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me here.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We're so excited. So to dive into the first question, what is RHA? Like you kinda
Speaker 4:said before, we're the on campus student government. So we represent all students living on the MSU campus, which means each residential hall, each, neighborhood also has a queer and black caucus. We represent those as well. And we also represent corps and cops groups. So we do a lot of funding, advocacy, different events.
Speaker 4:We have a
Speaker 2:lot of services. So yeah. And how does RHA support students and what services exactly does RHA provide?
Speaker 4:Yeah. We have a ton of different things we do, like I said. We have funding through our committee on budget. We have an on campus streaming service called RHA On Demand, which you can access through our website if you're on MSU Wi Fi. We have a lot of cool movies and shows on there.
Speaker 4:We have The Office. I think it's very cool. We have campus center cinemas, which we do every month on a weekend. We'll show movies from Friday to Sunday for free in Wells Hall. We do different sponsorships to campus groups either RSOs or different administrative groups will come and reach out for funding.
Speaker 4:So we do sponsorships through a few of our positions. We also rent out technology like Nintendo Switches, projectors, karaoke machines. As for the advocacy part, we have a seat at the Board of Trustees, which we speak in every other month. We have people on seats at culinary, transportation, and many other university committees to advocate for the voices of on campus students. And then throughout our own general assembly, we're also able to write and pass legislation for on campus student.
Speaker 4:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:But moving on to the third question, What does RHA specifically do to improve the on campus living experience for residents?
Speaker 4:So the way RHA works is we take a $25 tax, and then we put that tax right back into services and resources that support student. So kind of like I've said before, that goes back into constituent events, different resources, and advocacy that supports students. So we take that tax and make sure it tries to directly get back to benefiting on campus students.
Speaker 2:And in what ways does RHA make itself known for students?
Speaker 4:We try to be very active on campus and online. So if you're not already following the RHA Instagram, I'll plug it at MSURHA. If you've seen Cal merch across campus, that's probably us. We call our mascot who is Cecilia our chief of wonder, so c o w. We use her a lot for marketing, and then we work with different student groups and administrators and RAs to try to make our resources and services as available as possible.
Speaker 4:So you'll see us at a ton of different events across campus. There's an event going on with the course and cops group. It's likely you're gonna see our logo on the flyer. So we work a lot with a ton of different groups to try to make sure we reach as many groups and as people as possible. That's great.
Speaker 3:So then how can students get involved with RHA? And where can students find contact information for RHA?
Speaker 4:Yeah. There's a lot of different ways to get involved with RHA. The first way is the kind of more traditional route. So you can join your hall government if you're still living or if you're living in residence halls or you can join a caucus in your neighborhood. So each neighborhood is going to have a black caucus, a queer caucus, and then each residence hall in that neighborhood is going to have a hall government.
Speaker 4:You could join those. You could become an RHA rep if you want to get even more involved or we also have representatives through the Corps and COPS groups. So whatever you like to do at campus or however you identify, there's definitely a way through that to get involved with RHA. You can also apply for our leadership positions, so there's a ton of different one of those. I I actually started in RHA as an office staff, so I just kind of clean up the office and I worked my way up to president where I am now.
Speaker 4:So there's definitely a ton of different routes. If you want to find us, we have an MSU website. It's rha.msu.edu. We again are MSU RHA on socials. We mainly use Instagram.
Speaker 4:I think we're trying to work on TikTok, so keep your eye out for that. And, yeah, contact us if you have any event ideas or initiatives or anything like that. We love working with people, anybody. We're happy to collaborate. We're happy to be here.
Speaker 4:This is an example of just getting out and doing things. We love to get our voice out there.
Speaker 2:And just to kind of wrap us up, what is your favorite part about being involved with RHA?
Speaker 4:I think my first one is just the people. All the people that choose to be involved with RHA are very passionate and welcoming and productive people, so it's nice to be in such a supportive environment that's also getting stuff done. And then I think also just all the different experiences I've been able to have. I went a couple weekends ago to New Mexico spring concert every year, so we've gotten to see people like Waka Flocka and Hippo spring concert every year so we've gotten to see people like Waka Flocka on hippocampus and meet them, which was amazing. I have the opportunity to meet with different administrators and just advocate for residents and know them personally, which has been a very cool experience.
Speaker 4:Just working in our office with our team is super amazing and it's nice to know that the work we do matters and that we do it with people who really care. So yeah, I love talking about RHA.
Speaker 3:And we love hearing about it.
Speaker 2:K. Well, thank you for joining us on this podcast, and thank you for listening to this episode of the Spartan Orientation Station. Make sure to check back next week for another exciting episode. Go green. Go white.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spartan Orientation Station on Impact 89 FM. Let us know what you think by connecting with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram atmsu_ns0.