After previous weeks of discussion on the giving away of singles to underclassmen in the housing raffle, this week saw Residential Education once again embroiled in controversy over the low number of single bedroom rooms for females, compared with the number of singles for males.

This discussion was initially sparked by a post on April 23 on the NYUAD Forum Facebook group, which highlighted the disparity in single rooms on visitation floors. The initial response from Res Ed, relayed to the student body by Class of 2018 Representative Kelly Murphy, was that there was a restriction on the number of floors allocated to each gender. Later clarifications by Class of 2019 Representative Tami Gjorgjieva put the disparity down to the lack of female Residential Assistants.

For the 2017-2018 academic year there are 39 RAs, which is roughly five fewer than Res Ed had initially hoped to hire. Of the 39 RAs, 22 are male and 17 are female. To rectify the disparity in single rooms, another floor of female rooms was opened up on April 25. This floor, and one other, will be jointly managed by a male and a female RA, as there are not enough female RAs to have one on every female floor.

There is no clear reason for the low number of women who applied to be RAs. Kate Melville-Rea, class of 2018, was accepted to be an RA, but declined the offer due to wanting to stay closer to her friends.

“I love my flatmates to bits, and I wanted to spend my senior year with them,” wrote Melville-Rea. “We host a lot of people and have random events that couldn't be done in a small RA room. … I was having a great time with my friends and I didn't want to give that up by becoming an RA.”

Khadeeja Farooqui, class of 2017 and current RA, also noted that being distant from classmates turned some people away from being an RA.

“I tried to convince some of my friends to be RAs senior year,” said Farooqui, “but they were like, oh we want to live with our roommates, [we] don’t want to leave them.”

Brittany McDaniel, Assistant Director of Residential Education, was also unsure of the reason for the low number of female applicants.

“I think it's something that's very unique to this year,” said McDaniel. “It's something about NYUAD that I've seen during my time here at this university is that there are different unique situations every single year and we kind of have to adapt to them. … I don't think there's a scientific reason why less women chose to go through [the process of applying to be an RA] this year versus men.”

Farooqui also pointed towards the relationship between the student body and Res Ed as possibly limiting the number of applicants.

“I think part of it has to do with personally people do not really always have the best experiences with Res Ed,” said Farooqui.

Farooqui further suggested that the administrative tasks required of RAs are not known to students before they apply, “People don't really know what Res Ed does … I think the role [of an RA] … is not as multidimensional as people would like it to be.”