By Laura Reid, University Management Correspondent
Since the start of term, the University of Bristol has undergone an upheaval in the management of its residential wellbeing services. Epigram investigates staff and student responses to the new hub systems.
New Residential Life Teams have been implemented across campuses, "whose full-time job is to work with our established teams of live-in student peer mentors on community building and early identification and support of vulnerable students".
The Residential Life service includes the following FTE (full-time equivalent) roles, split across three Residential Villages (West, East and North):
- Head of Residential Life (three posts)
- Deputy Head of Residential Life (three posts)
- Residential Life Adviser (daytime, night and weekend, 21 FTE posts)
- Residential Life Administrator (three posts)
- Residential Experience Co-ordinator (three posts)
- Chief Residents (24 posts)
- Senior Residents (96 posts)
Epigram spoke to Laura, a residential life adviser from West Village, who spoke positively about her experiences of the new hub system. She arrived at the new village a couple of weeks before term started, in order to prepare for the arrival of new students. Laura reported that they had been approached by lots of students during freshers week, and it seemed that students were very aware of how to access the village hubs.
However, the new Residential Life system has met with understaffing issues and confusion from some students about where to go for help. Whilst the hubs are operational and are being used to an extent, they are not necessarily equipped to deal with the numbers of new students.
Cris Oehling, Chair of the Keep Our Communities society, highlighted the problems faced during the system overhaul - particularly leading to confusion during the move in weekend.
Some of these issues included:
- No porters in some residences during the move in weekend
- Room allocations being given to some students only two days before they moved in
- Former hall staff (deputy wardens) being called back to open the bar despite no longer being responsible for this
- Senior residents being shared between halls, thus making them overstretched
- Some Residential Life Advisers being unsure of procedures
- Advice given to call security if Senior Residents were overwhelmed, despite this not being the role of security staff
Speaking on behalf of Keep Our Communities, Cris stated:
"We (Keep Our Communities) warned senior management about the worries that staff may not be recruited in time and the system would not be fully operational for the start of the new term. Despite JCRs, Wardens, Deputy Wardens, SRs and a number of other pastoral staff members warning the university about this, the model was pushed forward in a rushed manner, which has clearly led to the problems stated above."
A spokesperson for the University stated: "As with any new service there will inevitably be areas where we need to make small adjustments but after our first week there has been plenty of positive feedback that the new Residential Life service is helping our new students to settle in to life at Bristol."
In contrast to this, Keep Our Communities have argued that the whilst senior management are aware of the issues which took place over move in weekend, and which have continued since, these have been underplayed and regarded as "teething issues".
Featured Image: University of Bristol Website
