Every residence hall at MU has its own hall coordinator, an adult staff member who lives in the hall and supervises its student staff. In the past, hall coordinators have acted as resources who could be reached 24/7. But that has now changed.

Federal rules that define which employees are exempt from receiving overtime pay have changed. Employees whose salaries fall below the $47,000 mark are considered nonexempt, which means they have to clock in and receive payment if they work overtime. Those over the mark are considered exempt, which means they would not need to track overtime. Hall coordinators were previously exempt, but under the new federal standards, coordinators now fall under nonexempt status, which imposes more rigid limits on their schedules.

In practice, being a hall coordinator is not a 40-hour-a-week job. Hall coordinators now face large restrictions on what they can and can’t do outside of these strict, regular hours. Helping with a situation in the hall, answering a call from a student staff member or even responding to a work-related text or email is considered overtime when it is done outside of a hall coordinator’s designated hours without having been given permission at least a week in advance.

Now, all after-hours concerns are routed to the hall coordinators “on-duty.” The campus is divided into two districts, and one hall coordinator is on duty every night for a week in each district. Because building-specific hall coordinators are no longer available all the time, student staff members might have to rely more heavily on the hall coordinator on duty instead of their own.

But there are flaws in this program. Staff members often text or call their building’s hall coordinator for in-the-moment guidance on policies or problems. A misstep in policy could be a fireable offense for a student staff member. The same kind of specific, personal response is not possible from an on-duty hall coordinator from a different hall.

If the on-duty hall coordinator is needed for multiple incidents on campus at once, they obviously cannot be in several places at the same time. It is difficult for hall coordinators to divide attention between multiple emergencies that each require them to be present in a different hall.

On-duty hall coordinators may also not be able to deal with ongoing situations with the familiarity that the specific hall’s coordinator would be able to. The MU Police Department, which also can be called for late-night emergencies, lacks building-specific knowledge as well. If a resident has had consistent problems or incidents, the building’s hall coordinator will know their history and what might need to be done in a specific instance. That knowledge might vary from coordinator to coordinator, and an on-duty hall coordinator from another hall might not have the same knowledge.

It is not MU’s fault this federal law was changed. However, the Department of Residential Life did have a choice. Instead of keeping hall coordinator salaries the same and making them nonexempt employees, ResLife should have raised hall coordinator salaries and made them exempt. They should have done what they could to keep hall coordinators available to their own halls.

By not doing this, ResLife is putting students at risk to save money. The safety of students is not something that should be a trade-off with a monetary value. Students’ well-being should be the top priority of ResLife and of the university.