This year, Prime Time in-a-box is a new plan that has been implemented for Resident Assistants (RAs) at Whitworth University to help them better balance schoolwork and manage residence halls. Prime Times are events put on by RAs for students living on campus to partake in. On-campus students enjoy the sense of community these events provide but RAs may be challenged with coming up with new ideas while juggling a busy school schedule.  

Prime Time in-a-box is a newly implemented system this year that aims to lighten the workload for RA’s and to educate faculty and staff about the work that goes into making a Prime Time.  

“A Prime Time in-a-box is just literally what it sounds like. It’s an activity in a box,” said Pierce Hill, an RA in Duvall Hall. “If you’re running short on time, you didn’t want to plan one, or you just forgot, that’s what the Prime Time in-a-box is for.”  

The Prime Time in-a-box usually includes supplies and a creative plan for an activity. The idea was implemented by the Residence Life Coordinator, Krista Maroni, over the summer and brought to the area coordinators.  

“It was an effort to have other members of the Whitworth community, so staff and faculty… walk them through the process of creating a Prime Time,” said Bailey Sauls, the area coordinator for Oliver. An event that hosted the making of these back in August was both an experiment and an effort to bring out ideas from the community. 

Some members of the community who came out to the event include Admissions Officer Jeannie Huskisson, Residence Life Coordinator Tim Caldwell, and BMAC Area Coordinator Marie Curtis. The wide variety of participants correlates with the interesting ideas seen in the boxes. The boxes were distributed as a reward for RAs who excelled in a Kahoot! game based on training about their RA position.

Activities in the box range from dancing, gardening, crocheting, and even one with an interesting twist on the game Twister. Each box was consistent with the guidelines that help RA’s create prime times: critical thinking, meaningful relationships, respect for differences, and prime times that focus on the wellness wheel. Social, cultural, financial, physical and environmental are just some of the aspects of the wellness wheel, according to Ryann Bunch. 

Bunch, an RA in Ballard Hall, said, “It’s a really good idea honestly […] it helped even more with like, the competitiveness, like during training especially.” Bunch’s Prime Time in-a-box is a crocheting lesson that she hopes will attract both residents from McMillan and Ballard.  

“If there are things that are more gendered prime times, the opposite gender is less likely to come to them,” said Bunch. Her solution to overcoming this would be to entice students to come by portraying her Prime Time in-a-box as a surprise.  

The neighborhoods currently do not have prime times but rather do events. Sauls does not anticipate implementing Prime Time in-a-box for the neighborhoods because they are more oriented towards doing events rather than prime times.  

None of the RAs with a Prime Time in-a-box have used theirs yet, so student residence reports about the boxes are yet to come. Residents can, however, look forward to these fun activities.