To the editor:

I feel I need to respond to an article published in the Tuesday, April 11 edition of the Daily. “New IRHA execs eager to clarify group’s role at ISU” brought some suspicions and questions to my mind.

Tom Plagge and Chris Benson are the president-elect and vice President-elect, respectively, of the Inter-Residence Hall Association (IRHA) for next year.

One issue that they are particularly interested in working on is “expanding IRHA to other associations, such as Buchanan Hall and Hawthorn Court.”

Plagge and Benson feel that “they want IRHA to be a campus-wide association, not just for underclassmen.” Although the residence halls are popular among underclassmen, there are upperclassmen who live there also, so I am not sure what they mean by this statement.

Plagge goes on to say that “he and Benson will encourage Hawthorn Court to join IRHA, but he thinks Buchanan Hall will not be joining in the immediate future because of it’s upperclassmen majority.”

I found this quote to be strange, because as a student who will be living in Hawthorn Court next semester, I am aware that application to live there was open only to upperclassmen and special case graduate students.

This would mean that Hawthorn Court would result in having an upperclassmen majority, if not exclusivity.

In terms of upperclassmen majority, what makes Hawthorn Court, designed specifically for the single upperclass student, and traditionally has not had membership in IRHA that much different from Buchanan Hall, designed for older undergraduates and graduate students?

I have a suspicion. “Both executives are planning on moving to Hawthorn Court this fall. If the students of the apartment-style living quarters decide in the fall not to join IRHA, Plagge and Benson will be forced to resign from their executive positions.”

I feel, as a future resident of Hawthorn Court, that the students there are going to be unnaturally pressured by the new IRHA executives to join IRHA.

I am not sure if membership in IRHA is the right thing for Hawthorn Court or Buchanan Hall for that matter. I feel that whether membership would be beneficial will not be of consequence to Plagge and Benson.

I also wonder why these men decided to run for office, knowing that the only way they would be able to keep their position, should they win the election, would be to persuade about 1000 other students (the residents of Hawthorn Court) to agree to membership in an organization which may or may not be to their best interest.

The motives of Plagge and Benson to encourage Hawthorn Court’s membership in IRHA seem, to me, to be quite self-serving, and I am not sure if I am willing to buy into it.

Megan Olson

Sophomore

Apparel merchandising, design and production