At 6 p.m. on Nov. 17, Mercer’s Resident Hall Association, RHA, held their annual town hall meeting in Stetson Hall. The goal of the meeting was to bring awareness to issues that students may be experiencing in apartments and dorms on campus.
The main concerns addressed throughout the meeting included the lack of access to the kitchen in the Legacy dorm, issues with laundry rooms in many apartments and dorms and new ways to build community within housing locations.
During the town hall, a freshman resident of the Legacy dorms, Tony Hopper ‘26, brought attention to the fact that the residents of his building were not allowed access to the kitchen. He believed this could have been a result of the previous residents from the year before. However, Hopper felt that compared to the issues with the laundry room, this was only a minor issue.
Hopper stated that the laundry room in Legacy was always flooding. Jariel Hannor ‘23, the president of RHA, also mentioned that there was a dryer in the Garden Apartments that was broken. Another complaint about the laundry rooms was the lack of efficiency from residents in all of the resident halls. This was highlighted by the fact that people tend to move others' laundry.
“I think we should standardize procedures for the laundry room,” said the Resident Head of the apartment, graduate student Jacob Ward ‘24.
To address this, the group came up with some ideas. One idea was to implement whiteboards in all of the laundry rooms where people can put their phone numbers down to be contacted about their laundry. However, this idea has been implemented in a few dorms already and has had mixed results.
Another suggested idea was for people to bring individual sticky notes to put on their laundry machine to say when they will be back and who is using it.
Another topic brought up during this meeting was how to better engage the communities in the dorms and apartments. Solutions for this ranged from a Super Bowl event to being able to rent out ping pong tables from RHA. The group also discussed getting a Roku or another streaming service for the TVs in the lounges so students wouldn’t have to provide their own laptops and HDMI cords to watch movies.
During this meeting, the RHA also discussed upcoming events that they were hoping to host. One of these is a lock-in where the students can lock a standard master lock onto a designated fence to commemorate their time here at Mercer. Another upcoming event is a swap and shop where students are able to donate any perishable items and exchange them for what others have donated.
If students have issues that were not mentioned at the meeting or they would like addressed, they are encouraged to submit them through a QR code that can be found on the Resident Life website, under the RHA tab.
