While policies are the minimum standards for all communities (not changed by community agreements), there are many areas where residents can negotiate and determine how they will live together. This worksheet will help guide you and your floormates in developing your community living standards.
Possible Discussion Topics:
Floor Activities (Social, Community Service, Educational, etc.):
What types of activities do we want to do as a floor? What expectations will we have for attendance to those activities? How will we all participate in the planning of floor activities?
Intramural Sports:
Do we want to participate as a floor in the campuses intramural sports program? How will ensure that all members of our floor have an opportunity to participate? How will we support those who are playing in the current event?
Academic Success:
How will we support one another academically? What will we do to celebrate our academic successes?
Open Doors:
What does it mean when we have our doors open? Should we knock before entering or is that an open invitation to simply come in the room?
Floor Guests:
How will our guests know to respect our Community Living Agreement? How can we prevent our guests from violating our agreement? What will we do if a guest damages our community?
Quiet Hours:
What is an acceptable level of noise for our neighbors? What is the best way to address one another when we would like our neighbors to be quieter? How do we agree to respond when a request to quiet down is made of us?
Lounge Use:
Will our lounge space be designated as a social space, study space or both? If both how will it be determined when it is a study space and when a social space? What are our expectations about the appropriate use of the lounge?
Bathrooms (be mindful that your floor may share a bathroom with another community):
How will we schedule and determine shower use? What is appropriate use of the bathroom space? Will residents be safe to leave personal items in the bathroom? What guidelines will we set around guests using the bathrooms?
Bulletin Boards:
How will we respect the bulletin boards on our floor? What are appropriate things to write on a free thought bulletin board? How can we all participate in decorating our floor?
Floor Meetings:
Occasionally, RAs/ALAs required attendance at particular floor meetings. Other than those meetings, what is our expectation around residents attending floor meetings?
Respect for the Residence Life Staff (Maintainers, RAs/ALAs/PMs, A/RD/ACC/AM):
How will we respect the maintainer for our floor? What can we do to assist him/her with keeping our community clean?
What can we do to make our RAs/ALAs/PMs job easier? How can we help him/her in developing the community on our floor?
Safety and Security:
How will we respect one another’s differences? How will we watch out for our neighbors? What can we do to ensure the safety of all members of our community?
Community Relations:
How can we communicate regularly with one another (e-mail, IM screen names etc.)? How will we handle disagreements with one another? How do we show respect for each other? How will we hold each other responsible for damages?
Changes to our Agreement:
How will we make changes/additions to this Community Living Agreement? When will we review our agreement?