2008 Woodie Awards
Bennett improves student standings with community
Issue date: 5/1/08
Carrie Bennett has been living in an apartment building filled with college fraternity boys for the past three years.
As a resident house adult who moved into to Alpha Delta Phi's new apartment in summer 2005, she is affectionately known as Alpha Delta Phi's "house mom."
"I think you'd have to be a little crazy, have a lot of patience and a good sense of humor to do something like that," chapter advisor Ed Donahue said.
"I think it is fantastic," Carrie Bennett said. "It was an experiment."
Approximately 10 years into her job on the campus police force, Bennett read a News-Letter article proposing that a position as a liaison between students and the community should be created due to the increase of neighborhood complaints about Hopkins students branching away from Homewood campus. Three years later, when Bennett was a sergeant and had no other position to earn other than lieutenant, a more administrative job, she took on the job as student community liaison.
She was simultaneously offered the position as the live-in house adult at Wawa, which was relocating to its current building on North Charles Street.
"When we bought a new building and sold our old chapter house, we were not able to spend three million dollars and turn it over to 18 to 21-year-olds without adult supervision," Donahue said. "We wanted a calming influence to the place, not someone to replace their mother or disciplinarian, but to encourage them to behave like adults."
According to Donahue, the alumni association was planning to advertise within the faculty for a graduate student to live at the building and take RA training. He called Dean of Student Life Susan Boswell for suggestions, who mentioned Bennett's name.
"She said I was the only person crazy enough to take the job," Bennett said, laughing.
"The boys weren't enthused at first, because that was a fairly radical departure from the status quo. It wasn't really negotiable," Donahue said. "But since then, the guys love her, even if it took some convincing at first."
As a resident house adult who moved into to Alpha Delta Phi's new apartment in summer 2005, she is affectionately known as Alpha Delta Phi's "house mom."
"I think you'd have to be a little crazy, have a lot of patience and a good sense of humor to do something like that," chapter advisor Ed Donahue said.
"I think it is fantastic," Carrie Bennett said. "It was an experiment."
Approximately 10 years into her job on the campus police force, Bennett read a News-Letter article proposing that a position as a liaison between students and the community should be created due to the increase of neighborhood complaints about Hopkins students branching away from Homewood campus. Three years later, when Bennett was a sergeant and had no other position to earn other than lieutenant, a more administrative job, she took on the job as student community liaison.
She was simultaneously offered the position as the live-in house adult at Wawa, which was relocating to its current building on North Charles Street.
"When we bought a new building and sold our old chapter house, we were not able to spend three million dollars and turn it over to 18 to 21-year-olds without adult supervision," Donahue said. "We wanted a calming influence to the place, not someone to replace their mother or disciplinarian, but to encourage them to behave like adults."
According to Donahue, the alumni association was planning to advertise within the faculty for a graduate student to live at the building and take RA training. He called Dean of Student Life Susan Boswell for suggestions, who mentioned Bennett's name.
"She said I was the only person crazy enough to take the job," Bennett said, laughing.
"The boys weren't enthused at first, because that was a fairly radical departure from the status quo. It wasn't really negotiable," Donahue said. "But since then, the guys love her, even if it took some convincing at first."
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