UI hosts IACURH conference
Delegates from 31 universities had a look into Disney’s Wonderland over the weekend as the University of Idaho hosted the Intermountain Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls (IACURH) annual conference.
IACURH is a branch of NACURH, the National Association of College and University Residence Halls.
“Basically, the idea of NACURH, and by extension IACURH, is to build residence hall leaders and to advocate for residence hall involvement and living,” said Jake Smith, IACURH Public Relations chair.
The 325 delegates who attended the conference traveled from eight states in the region including Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona, and also included individuals from Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territory of Canada. Smith said there are usually delegates from South Africa as well, but they were unable to attend this year.
IACURH Co-Conference Chair Michelle Aoi said the purpose of the conference is to help resident assistants share their experiences in programming pertaining to things like diversity, sustainability and student involvement with other colleges and universities in the region.
“It’s a conference to help promote leadership and to better our residence halls throughout our region and throughout the United States,” Aoi said.
Aoi said the UI committee went through a grueling bidding process for the honor of hosting the conference. She said UI is one of the smaller schools in the conference, and this is the first time since 2006 that UI has hosted IACURH.
The bidding process began over a year ago — the committee wrote a 70-page document outlining its theme and plan for programming sessions, entertainment and philanthropy opportunities, and presented the plan at last year’s conference.
The theme the UI committee chose for this year’s IACURH conference was “Through the Looking Glass,” from Alice in Wonderland. The goal, according to Smith, was to incorporate inclusivity and diversity into the conference and to create better student leaders through exposure to different perspectives.
“Our theme brings in Alice in Wonderland in that she fell down the rabbit hole and was exposed to this diverse world and was sort of intimidated and sort of nervous and anxious about it,” Smith said. “But after she became exposed to it, she was able to more comfortably exist there.”
Seventy program sessions held Saturday and Sunday were spread across eight categories and corresponded with the theme of the conference.
The categories included “Following the path of the leader,” aimed at building more competent leaders, according to Smith. The next category, “Supporting Wonderland’s flowers,” concerned environmentalism and how students and RAs could incorporate the issues into their programs. “Alternating worlds” was a category Smith said was meant to pinpoint the theme of diversity and inclusivity.
Delegates who did not attend most of the program sessions instead attended “Boardroom,” where they went to vote on legislation and decide on things that would better their region and the national organization.
Evening entertainment opportunities included a TabiKat drag show put on by the local TabiKat Productions in Moscow, viewings of Alice in Wonderland, hypnotist Chris Pemberton and IACURH Feud, which Smith said was like Family Feud but with questions relating to IACURH, NACURH and resident living. Saturday, the conference held the traditional “Swap Shop,” where all of the attending schools traded swag items.
Three philanthropic opportunities were held during the conference, the main event being the American Red Cross’ Holiday Mail for Heroes, where delegates wrote thank you cards to be delivered to U.S. veterans in December. Delegates also brought textbooks for contribution to Books For Africa and also participated in Random Acts of Kindness, doing little things to help out another person.
“It’s basically just showing that we are all human beings, that we are all interacting together, that we can be kind to one another,” Smith said.
The opening ceremonies took place Friday evening with a keynote speech by Butch Fealy, director of Intramural Sports at UI, who had been an RA and is still involved with helping assistants become better leaders.
“He (Fealy) is very open to assisting in helping get residents involved in programming,” Aoi said. “He helps with the resident assistants and the area assistants every August when they come back for training to help build teamwork and to promote leadership skills.”
The busy weekend closed out Sunday night with the “Unbirthday Dance,” from 9:30 p.m. to midnight with karaoke and a video contest.
Mary Malone can be reached at [email protected]