As a result of underbudgeting for desk attendants’ (DAs) salaries in the residence halls during the 2015-2016 academic year, Residence Life and Housing has cut DA hours and implemented other changes in the residence halls to maintain consistent standards across campus.

The residence halls are completely self-supported through room and board fees paid by the 4,400 students who live on campus, according to Nick Lyons, vice president for administration and finance.

According to Richard Kolenda, assistant vice president for residence life and housing, the budget for DA payroll was overdrawn for two reasons: an increase in minimum wage that went into effect halfway through the academic year, in Jan. 2016, and an overutilization of DA hours.

“As a result we did two things,” Kolenda said in an email statement. “First, we looked at the line budget item for desk attendants and made allocation adjustments where necessary.”

According to Kolenda, moving money from one line item to another in a budget is something that “happens all the time.”

“Second, we reaffirmed the approved desk hours and redistributed desk hours schedules for each residence hall,” Kolenda continued in his email statement.

According to Kolenda, the hours were rescheduled for the sake of consistency across all the residence halls on campus.

According to Cayuga resident assistant (RA) Matthew Prawel, in Cayuga Hall, the two RAs who are on-call for the day are required split sitting at the desk for six hours a day, compared to four hours a day in previous years. The same policy applies over on the east side of campus as well, said Riggs Hall DA Amanda George.

“That’s two hours a day that the DAs are losing,” Prawel said. “I was a DA before I was an RA and I averaged 12 to 16 hours per week, but I know DAs now are getting five to seven hours.”

When these changes were first introduced, RAs were concerned about the time of day they were required to sit the desk, Prawel said.

Originally, Prawel said, Residence Life administration scheduled RAs to sit the desk from 1 to 3 a.m. every night.

“That did not sit well with the RA staff,” Prawel said. “Why should we stay up until 3 a.m. when some people have classes at 8 a.m.? We’re students first, that’s what they tell us as an RA.”

Kolenda said Residence Life and Housing made changes to the desk schedule after the RAs voiced their concerns. Now, RAs cover 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on week nights and 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weekends, said both Prawel and George.

“I understand them wanting to make every building the same, but not every building is the same,” Prawel said. “They say that hall directors tweaked things here and there, well, maybe that’s for good reason.”

Prawel also expressed concern about how the extra hours at the desk can take RAs away from dealing with other problems in the building.

“One of us has to be at the desk,” Prawel said. “We now have one less RA for two hours, because that RA has to be at the desk. So now, we only have one RA that would have to go deal with a party in a dorm, for example. So now you either have to find someone to go to the party scene with you or have someone go down to cover the desk who’s not on call. We don’t mind doing that for each other, but that’s not how the system is built.”

Another change to residence halls this year involves checking students’ Oswego State ID cards at certain times during the day, primarily late at night.

Previously, residence halls would check student IDs from midnight to 3 a.m. Now, IDs are never checked.

“We made the choice not to check IDs,” Kolenda said. “If you are going to check IDs, you should check IDs all the time.”

According to Kolenda, not checking IDs is not a student safety concern because there are other ways to screen people coming into residence halls, such as swipe-card access and security cameras.

However, some students are concerned about safety.

“I would rather have IDs checked at night than not,” sophomore Cayuga resident Christopher Castoro said. “It feels safer.”