Health and safety inspections will now be a requirement for all Southeast Missouri State University students who live on campus in residence halls. The new policy, put in place by the Office of Residence Life, is a way to "help students proactively keep their rooms clean," according to Chris Miller, Towers East hall director.

Every resident assistant on campus attended a meeting on Feb. 8 explaining the new policy and what it means for RAs and residents.

"Basically we go into each resident's room with another RA and check to see that it's clean and for overall healthy living conditions," Sierra Hamlin, a Greek Hill RA, said. "Some residents might not notice mold or other problems that their room could potentially have, so we come in to make sure everything is healthy, and if there is a problem we can report and take care of it."

For each room, the inspecting RA will have a checklist of cleanliness items to be looking for: trash, mold or mildew and food are some examples.

Also on the list are Facilities Management issues like heating/air conditioning, window screens and refrigerator/microwave cleanliness. Finally, items barred by residence life policies such as drugs, alcohol and candles with burnt wicks will also be checked for.

"The health and safety process is to help make sure our residence halls are the best environment for students to live in, whether that's in the issue of cleanliness, in the issue of any potential violations that may disturb others such as an animal that they shouldn't have, running down the hallways, disturbing other residents," Miller said. "But really just back to the cleanliness aspect. Let's say you have a stack of pizza boxes in your room. That could attract bugs and then therefore, because you have bugs in your room, that's no good, but those bugs might transfer into the room next door, and that could cause further problems for the whole community."

The set dates for the first inspection are between March 2 and March 4. Residents can expect a knock on their door during this period from their RA to have their room inspected. The resident living in the room getting inspected does not have to be present in order for the RAs to do the inspection.

"A lot of [residents] feel like it's an invasion of their privacy because the residents don't technically have to be there to do it," Hamlin said. "So I've heard that concern quite a bit."

Miller said he hopes residents will understand that this is not a negative program.

"I think it's a good idea to check for mold and stuff that's hazardous to our health, but I don't like the idea of someone looking through my stuff when I'm not here for other reasons," Christina Clay, a sophomore resident in Towers South, said.

Clay's roommate, Allison Eldridge, agreed.

"It's an invasion of privacy," Eldridge said.

During an inspection, an RA can only document what can be seen in plain sight, and the door of the room being inspected must remain open so anyone can see what the RA is doing.

"Many universities around the nation do health and safety inspections on a set basis, and so the Director of Residence Life Kendra Skinner asked for me to do some research. We researched with 26 different universities across the nation to hear about what they did and how their programs work and we've modeled ours using a lot of that data," Miller said. "It's a new thing here at Southeast, it's never happened before, but I'm excited to see how it all comes together and hopefully it's a positive experience for students."