Life at the RKS
The Dining Experience
Wake Forest Dining Facilities have been recognized for both extremely high quality food and a great environment to eat in. Students will eat at the Reynolda Hall Dining Facility ranked by USA TODAY as one of the 36 Best College Dining Halls in North America. All food in the award-winning dining halls is covered in the tuition. They are great with allergies, vegetarian diets, and jFor those who desire a fast-food break, there is also a Subway, Chic-Fil-A, Moe's Burito, Grill, and a Salad Shop on campus.
Residence Halls
Wake Forest renovates its residence halls on a regular basis. There have been several built within the past 10 years and all have been updated within that time span. Each hall is air conditioned. The main common areas have all been redone and include: high-speed wifi, ice machines, full kitchens, and most include a ping-pong and/or foosball table. There is also a media viewing room which will be used for both showing movies and debates. There is even an app for telling you when your laundry is done and machines are available. If you are expecting a normal college living experience, you won't get one, this is Wake Forest.
Dorm Oversight
There are three sets of people who stay in the dorm with the students. The Head Dormitory Supervisor, Resident Assistants employed by Wake Forest University and Resident Assistants employed by Wake Forest Debate.
The Head Dormitory Supervisor, Samantha Rippetoe is someone who has experience working with students in this capacity before. This is her second year at Wake Forest in the role. Prior to being at Wake Forest, she was a lead Dormitory supervisor at the collegiate level at Humboldt State University. She also possesses a background in debate so understanding student needs is not a problem.
Resident Assistants employed by Wake Forest are there to make sure all protocols are followed. They are extensively trained by Wake Forest University in both crisis identification and crisis mitigation. They report directly to the WFU Summer Conferences and not to the debate workshop. While they rarely interact with students, it is good to know that students have an extra level of safety provided.
Residence Assistants employed by Wake Debate perform the majority of the dormitory duties. They will be at the front line of bed checks, wake-up calls and resolving any inter-personal disputes that arise. There is someone on-call 24 hours a day, and we have both male and non-male RAs on duty to make sure every student has someone they feel comfortable with. We place emphasis on making sure the students settle into dorm life as much as possible, as we believe that sleeping well and enough is critical to their successful learning during workshop activities. RAs are also teachers at our workshop, and their duties in the evening include talking over the following day's debates with the individual teams. Unlike other workshops, we do not employ those who just graduated high school.
The Classrooms
We are blessed at Wake Forest to have a number of classrooms all seamlessly integrated with various forms of technology. Speakers, projectors, ethernet ports, power plugs and quality chairs and tables are in every room we will use this summer. Given the instructors ability to use this technology, imagine being able to watch a debate, follow along with a speech doc, demonstrate how to effectively tag a card, and much more, all without leaving your lab room.