During the month of May, Antario embodied servant leadership during the closing of the hall. As the RD, I assigned several duties to my staff of eleven RAs. These responsibilities helped to ensure the building was ready to host conferences during the summer, including setting the furniture in the rooms, collecting keys from residents, and ensuring the rooms remained in decent condition by listing any damages to the rooms for submission to Plant Operations and noting if any additional cleaning needed to be completed for a particular room. Through this process, staff discovered one room left in horrible condition by a resident who failed to check out properly. To say the room was very dirty and damaged would be an understatement. The resident left damaged furniture that needed to be thrown out, spoiled food, dirty clothes, and trash everywhere! In order to effectively prepare the room for the summer, it required the efforts of all eleven RAs plus myself.

After consulting with the Assistant Director of Residence Life for the area, I asked the entire staff to meet early one morning to work on the room. The timing could not have been more inconvenient as several staff members were preparing for their last final exams, checking out their own residents from their rooms, and, in some cases, preparing for graduation. The night before the cleaning meeting, I visited the room once more to create a plan of how to efficiently work on the room. To my surprise, the room had already been cleaned, the trash disposed of, the furniture set, and all damages noted. I discovered that Antario took it upon himself to clean the room, alone, earlier that evening so that the other 10 RAs could use the time set aside for cleaning the room on other projects.

The process took Antario several hours of heavy lifting, sweating, and hard work. He acted selflessly to help benefit and serve the entire staff. This is only one example of many and demonstrates the type of RA Antario continually strives to be. Antario works hard, never slacking. Throughout the year, especially during the closing of the residence hall during the month of May, he always asked how he could assist the residents and the staff. He served as a mentor to the baseball players on his floor, helped his residents with personal issues, taught them how to register for classes, and helped them form good study habits. Antario was, and continues to be, known as a light of sunshine because he always knew how to make someone’s day a little brighter! He sets a positive example for individuals across the world, not just for the students within his residence hall at Belmont University.

With all of this in mind, Antario Jones deserves to be recognized for maintaining a standard of excellence and for going above and beyond the expectations of the Resident Assistant position.

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