The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2 - 76

Diane D. Everett • Zachary V. Loftus

were less formal and more lenient with their own residents. These previous investigations have regarded role conflict as an individual problem (Schaller & Wagner, 2007), focused only on one type of policy violation (Rubington, 1990), or studied RAs at only one class level or only in first-year residence halls (Rubington, 1990; Schaller & Wagner). This study extended prior research by analyzing RAs’ role conflict pertaining to their handling of various types of policy violations in residence halls with RAs and undergraduate students across class levels. Specifically, it examined RAs’ possible role conflict generated by two RA statuses and their corresponding roles: student friend and institutional rule enforcer. It aimed to determine whether RAs have personal relationships (e.g., friendships) with residents, to discern whether and how often they experience role conflict with respect to handling residents’ policy violations, and to examine how difficult it is for them to take disciplinary action against residents with whom they are more familiar. Furthermore, unlike most previous inquiries, this one identified the source of that conflict as the organization’s structure and processes and RAs’ multiple statuses within that structure (rather than RAs’

individual characteristics or interpersonal dynamics). Casting RAs’ role conflict in terms of incompatible expectations and contradictory demands stemming from their structural positions of policy enforcers and peers/friends within the institution has implications for ways to reduce their role conflict.

RESEARCH DESIGN
Setting
The study was conducted late in the fall 2007 semester at a private, residential, southeastern, comprehensive university with approximately 2,200 undergraduate students. The mean age of the undergraduate students was 20; 58.7% were female; 96.6% were full-time; and most (90% of the first-time, first-year students and 72% of the undergraduates overall) lived on campus. Undergraduates below senior status were required to live on campus, with exemptions granted to students who had an internship that required them to live off campus, were married, or had immediate family members in the vicinity with whom they could live.

Resident Assistant Training and Study Participants
The university’s training sessions and materials for RAs outline the policies and procedures they are expected to follow and enforce. The guidelines instruct RAs to document a rule infraction in a written report and to send the report to the student judicial affairs office. At the beginning of each semester, RAs review the university’s rules, policies, and procedures with residents in information sessions. Moreover, upon residence hall check-in, all students are required to sign a document acknowledging that they have read and understand residential life policies and procedures contained in the student hand-

. . . few investigations explicitly acknowledge the conflict that arises when RAs’ personal relationship with residents competes with their disciplinary role .

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 37, No. 2

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