res liFe Structure or Flexibility? by Holly Alexander Selecting the programming model that best fits your campus One of the balancing acts involved in creating and implementing residential curricula is to determine how much responsibility resident assistants have for programming. Giving them free reign can result in arbitrary or subjective programming that may not meet the needs of residents or may result in no programming at all if RAs take the responsibility too lightly. On the other hand, requiring them to follow a tightly structured plan may result in merely obligatory efforts that lack the spark of 16 Talking STick creativity and flexibility. For this reason, programming models vary widely from one institution to another. Some are highly structured, establishing a clear and defined part that resident assistants play in developing and implementing a curriculum, while others are less structured, providing them with more autonomy and flexibility. One structured approach is the Residential Curriculum Model (RCM), which sets forth clear and defined elements related to educational