Residence halls to close this weekend

IU’s 11 residence halls will empty this weekend, and Resident Assistants will begin work to prepare for the summer.

Most residence halls are requiring students to move out by 10 a.m. Saturday, unless a student has special exceptions such as assisting with graduation ceremonies or moving into summer housing.

After the move-out, RAs check all residents’ rooms for damages.

Kirsten Fulton is an RA in Rose Avenue Residence Hall and will help Rose close for the first time.

This is Rose’s first year in operation, but Fulton said they had to go through checks before opening after the conclusion of summer programming.

“During the transition from summer to opening there weren’t many problems,” she said.

IU is host to many summer programs each year, including camps for journalism, business and various athletic programs.

The only problems Fulton has seen have been with the check-in and check-out processes, she said.

“Sometimes something gets overlooked, but I don’t think there’s a lot of problems that go on,” she said. “The only thing we really have problems with is the computer system when we check people in and out.”

RAs in other established residence halls have had time to get a full picture of check out.

“I only went through closing once last year and we didn’t have many problems,” said Grace Todd, a second-year RA in Collins Living Learning Center.

Todd said checks took about two and a half hours last year, but she’s not sure how long the cleaning and restoring processes take to prepare the residence hall for summer.

RAs in Collins work in teams of at least three and check every floor of the building they work in, Todd said.

Todd said the biggest problem RAs run into is residents who forget they have to be out by 10, but most residents are out by noon.

Fulton said there’s no deadline for the closing procedures.

“I think it really only takes a week, maybe a week and a half just to clean everything up,” she said.