At a time when many sophomores are considering applying to be RCAs, it’s interesting to examine the role of an RCA itself. We are all aware of the fact that sophomores don’t get the same attention, cuddling and affection that freshmen do — rightfully, in my opinion. We’re the older siblings: the children who the parents have outgrown and replaced with newer, cuter babies who need them more. The question is, do the babies need their older siblings?
An RCA does and should focus more on his or her assigned freshmen, because that’s where he or she is most needed. After a year at Princeton, we sophomores are expected to be able to navigate the waters of midterms, radically different roommate sleeping schedules, postage stamps, grade deflation and “How the hell do I open my locker in Frist?” on our own. We are not perfect, but we have been tested, and armed with caffeine, friends and iCal, we have somehow survived. If we face really serious problems, there is still an RCA assigned to us — who is also available if we get hungry.
But I do think that RCAs ought to have fewer one-class-only study breaks and facilitate more interaction between freshmen and sophomores within a ’zee group. If freshmen are presented with a range of older students whom they can approach with questions, chances are they will get better, fuller answers. This is especially applicable in the case of academic advice about which classes to take for a specific major, or which professors are particularly good, or which courses have the least (or most — this is Princeton, after all) amount of work. If your RCA is a chemical engineer, and you’re considering a major in anthropology, it’s highly unlikely that she’ll be able to give you accurate information. Of course, RCAs can (and frequently do) offer to put you in touch with a student who is better equipped to answer your subject-specific questions. But wouldn’t it be much easier if you could just turn around and ask the veteran sophomore sitting behind you and trying to hoard all the pizza?
I know that the reverse argument is that freshmen deserve the opportunity to get to know each other well without being invaded by a bunch of cocky, arrogant, loud sophomores. I am not advocating compromising that unique freshman bond. But I think that a little more inter-class interaction would be beneficial: Freshmen would expand the group of people they can approach for advice, while sophomores would develop new friendships and receive an opportunity to feel smart, mature and experienced (which doesn’t happen often). And it falls to the RCAs to facilitate this interaction, because it is not just for the sake of making friends (a freshman is offered multiple opportunities to do that), but also for the sake of having access to a range of opinions, conceptions and nuances of Princeton. Just getting the two classes in a room isn’t enough. Icebreakers, introduction games or just plain small talk — whatever the RCAs feel would work.
As sophomores, we will not have the authority to help you construct your bathroom-cleaning schedule, but we can still listen to you bitch and moan about how the drain is always clogged and recommend various cleaning supplies. We cannot give you the key card to get into the Dodge-Osborne kitchen in Wilson College, but between us, we can probably list every single edible object in the U-Store for you to cook. We won’t have stamps (and probably won’t know where to buy them because we spent all of last year sponging off our ever-patient RCAs) but we will put together an exhaustive list of all the places on and around campus where you can buy good coffee. We do not have the training to resolve your severe academic stress, but we will be able to recommend a good study space no matter what your study requirements are, because between us, we will have been to every single study space there is (and will know every attribute of every study space, because we focused far more on alertly observing our surroundings than on writing our 2,500-word paper).
Most of our RCA’s are incredibly smart, savvy and approachable people — but they are still intrinsically limited by the fact that each is only one person, with one person’s experience of the numerous dynamics and dimensions of the University. And Princeton can certainly never be condensed into one person’s experience of it.
Camille Framroze is a sophomore from Bombay, India. She can be reached at framroze@princeton.edu.
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