RHA to host national conference next year

This university's RHA will organize and host a regional conference of residence hall associations next year, bringing together hundreds of students to discuss how to improve their organizations.

Last weekend, over 400 students from 50 different schools attended a conference of the Central Atlantic Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls at the University of Pittsburgh. Five RHA delegates presented and won a bid to bring the conference to this university next year.

The university has not hosted a conference in the national association's 56-year history. At each year's conference, members from different schools share programs and strategies for more effectively representing on-campus students and managing their associations.

Senior psychology major and RHA Communications Officer Mitchell Amoros, co-chairman of this university's delegation, said he believed few — if any — students from this university had attempted to undertake the time-consuming process of constructing a bid in previous years.

While more than ten CAA schools initially planned to submit bids, all other schools dropped out or failed to complete their bids on time, leaving this university's bid uncontested. Delegates devoted several hours each week to the 60-page bid during the past year.

"We had to plan out everything from what hotel we'd have everyone at, what they do during the day," Amoros said. "Even what they eat and where they'd eat it."

Students also planned a theme for the conference, "cultural carnival," and will ask each school to create floats to drive across the campus.

The delegate team negotiated with representatives from a host of university departments, including the University of Maryland University College Inn and Conference Center, the Resident Life Department and the Department of Transportation Services. The conference will utilize several buildings on campus, including Cole Field House and the Stamp Student Union.

Negotiations for sponsorship from university departments such as DOTS and the student union eventually helped subsidize the cost to conference attendees, though keeping fees affordable initially posed a big challenge.

"It can be more expensive to host something like this here, because a hotel room might cost more in this area than one out in the country, for example," Resident Life Director Deb Grandner said.

Program chairwoman Elli Farr, a sophomore physiology and neurobiology and Spanish major, guessed initial difficulties finding sponsorship might have been due to the lackluster economy, though the team overcame roadblocks to bring the cost to attendees down to about $160, only a dollar difference from this year's conference.

Members of the team were motivated most by a desire to show off the university.

"We're so insanely proud to be at the University of Maryland," Amoros said. "We think we have one of the best schools in the country ... and we wanted to be able to show that off to everybody."

apino at umdbk dot com