Residence Council Training

The Dalhousie Student Union is unique in many many ways, but that also gives us great opportunities. One of the great opportunities we have is the residence council system that exists through residence hall (entire building) and house (sections of the buildings) councils forming DSU societies.

This year myself and the Vice President (Internal) Daniel Boyle created a morning session for all of the residence council leaders to come for a training session.

The topics that were covered were an introduction to the DSU (the purpose of the DSU, services that the DSU has to help students, DSU fee breakdown, and how each of the DSU executive can help their individual portfolios and their council as a whole), how to run effective council meetings, tips and tricks that we have learned along our journey, and a world cafe session.

There were approximately 100 residence council students that came to the training on Saturday morning and the session that I found most beneficial and what I think they enjoyed the most was the world cafe.

The group of 100 students were split up into groups of 6-8 people that ideally they did not already know. They then were given the question: what are successes you would like your residence to achieve this year? The groups had lively conversations and a range of ideas were produced (everything from basic statements about having fun to wanting to improve the quality of the food and the experience in the residence meal halls). The students were then asked to switch and find a new group of 6-8 people they did not know and answer the second question: what are successes you would the entire residence community to achieve this year? The groups in general had similar thoughts around having residence pride, having better communication between residences, having more inter-residence events and making their students more informed on what the councils are doing. This process was designed to get our residence leaders thinking about goals for the upcoming year.

Overall the event was a great success and I look forward to working with and supporting our residence leaders on many different initiatives this year.