Resident mentor technology switch saves USC money
Resident mentors are receiving a technology upgrade this semester, replacing pagers with cellphones and ultimately saving the university almost $350 per year.
The cellphones will serve the same function that the pagers did, allowing RMs on duty to be in contact with other RMs, communicate with the front desk and use them in emergency situations.
The pagers cost Housing $1,906.32 per year, according to Director of Housing Administration Joe Fortune. Though the cellphones will cost $9,837.36 per year, “this was offset by the removal of landline phones and voice mail services in RM rooms, which cost us $8,280 per year,” said Fortune. He added that data collected showed it was feasible to remove the in-room phones. The combined costs of the pagers and landline phones were $348.64 more expensive than the new cellphones.
“Cellphones are easier to use and understand for residents and RMs, which will improve communication between residents and their RM on duty staff,” said Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications for Housing Colleen Mullis. “The process to use a pager requires more steps than simply calling a cellphone entails, and a large population of students are not familiar with how to use a pager.”
Alex Bren, a second-year international business student and Capstone House RM, said she was thankful for the cellphones.
“They were really annoying; the pagers are archaic, not really loud and have a terrible battery life. Overall, they were very inefficient,” said Bren, who used a cellphone on duty for the first time last Monday. “It was so much better. It’s so much quicker and louder, and now we don’t have to use our own personal cellphones to respond to a page; we can communicate directly with others while not using our own personal minutes or having to switch devices.”
RMs began using the cellphones on Jan. 6, and the switch has been one long in the making, according to third-year political science student and president of the Resident Mentor Council Dominick Donaldson.
“Resident mentors have been rumbling about this since long before my tenure as a member of the staff. I can say that the subject came up multiple times in council sessions last year under Frank Moran [Jr.], but due to our intense investment in other projects, was not wholeheartedly pursued,” Donaldson said. “This year, we were able to prioritize in a way that allowed us to tackle this issue alongside others.”
The effort gained traction after the RM Council encouraged RMs to report problems with pagers to their supervisors.
“We figured that mass complaints couldn’t be ignored,” Donaldson said.
Donaldson’s logic proved sound; Residence Life Director Andy Fink took notice of the many complaints and formed a committee dedicated to finding a solution to the problem.
“I coordinated some discussions about the issue as well as looked into the issue myself,” Fink said. “I examined the duty response system to make sure that the cellphones would work with it.”
The RM Council also began to work toward a solution.
“We held a few meetings that acted as focus groups in order to ascertain what RMs felt would be the best method of remedying the situation, and sent the information we gathered off to Andy and a few other higher-ups,” Donaldson said. An independent committee was also formed by the RM Council but was later absorbed by the committee headed by Fink.
The overall response from RMs has been “very, very positive,” said Fink.
The switch will also help make collecting evidence for incident reports more efficient.
“It’s really good to have cellphones for IRs. Sometimes, we need to take pictures of evidence, so it’s nice to have a staff cellphone that has the picture on it instead of risking security issues with pictures on our personal phones,” Bren said.