Kaitlyn Coogan
Equinox Staff
The Keene State College Residence Hall Organization (RHO), on Thursday, Feb. 23, held a presentation to celebrate winning the “School of the Year” award from the National Association of College and University Residence Halls (NACURH) at a conference at Western Illinois University.
According to junior Kate Chimienti, who headed the project and is the current president of RHO, they had to go big or go home. So their 30-page bid was big enough to earn such a prestigious award.
“I think I’m still speechless. So many emotions come up when I think about it. I just can’t believe that we won. It’s probably one of my greatest accomplishments here at Keene State thus far. I think it’s a sense of pride,” Chimienti said.
To get such an award as the “School of the Year,” there are certain aspects that have to be accomplished. KSC’s RHO, according to Chimienti, accomplished the aspects by doing a variety of programming, such as the World AIDS Day event, changing the housing policy to gender inclusive rooms, getting more involved regionally, their community service efforts, as well as advocating for the students’ needs with things such as alcohol free programs. Some of these programs include Res Hall Rumble and the 24-hour musical.
Senior Alyssa Gilhooly, who also worked on the bid and is currently the Residential Life intern, and senior Sean O’Toole, who was president last year and is currently the national communications coordinator, worked with Chimienti for eight months, from August to March of last year, to make sure such a bid would be good enough.
RHO won regionally from the Northeast Association of College and University Residence Halls at New York University last March and continued to go on and win nationally. The “School of the Year” award is the highest honor a college can get, according to the NACURH website.
According to Gilhooly, RHO is the student organization that holds student initiatives and provides on campus programs for the entire student body. Gilhooly also said RHO is made up of different parts. RHO has a national recognition honorary as a sub-part of it which is called NRHH, National Residence Hall Honorary. RHO also has an executive board which runs the organization. It is also made up of a general assembly of hall council representatives where there is one from each residential community. The chairs are also a part of RHO.
“I think it’s great [that RHO won], it’s very impressive,” Campus Sustainability Officer Mary Jensen said. Jensen did not even know RHO was bidding for such an award until after they had won.
According to the NACURH website, NACURH is considered to be the largest student-run organization in the world. It is completely student-run, in all of the national and regional positions. It brings together over 400 schools from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Qatar. NACURH promotes living on campus as an integral part of the college experience, and strives to provide resources to help member schools create the ultimate residence hall environment and experience.
They also had to get letters of support, which they got from President Helen Giles-Gee, Vice President of Student Affairs Andrew Robinson, and Director of Residential Life, Kent Drake-Deese.
“I wrote a letter that talked about the various things that they have done and how strong residential life is on campus and how much they mean to the campus community,” Robinson said. “[RHO winning the award] is incredible; it’s beyond what any of us, or at least not what I, expected. I don’t think I had high expectation but I am very impressed with the work they did,” he said.
When bidding for the award, KSC’s RHO put on a graduation theme for its presentation. The members all dressed in caps and gowns. Chimienti said the presentation was only supposed to be around 25 minutes but they ended up presenting for an hour and a half because of all the questions the judges had.
According to O’Toole, every year RHO attends three conferences, two on a regional level and one on a national level. At these conferences, RHO can bid for different awards. Before winning “School of the Year,” RHO won two other awards the “Building RHA of the Year” and the “Advisor of the Year” awards.
“Everybody should be proud of this award. People should really talk it up that we are ‘School of the Year’ because we deserve it with all the dedication from students, faculty and staff that are willing to work with us making Keene State a better place, and a fun place to work and go to school,” Chimienti said.
Kaitlyn Coogan can be contacted at kcoogan@ksc.mailcruiser.com.