By snoadmin
We’ve all probably experienced the grandfather who thinks it’s a gas to tell the kids at family gatherings, “Pull my finger.”
Some of us have undoubtedly been the naïve cousins who pulled that finger, only to be victims of the grandfather ripping one, while laughing hysterically at his folly.
Good Ol’ “Grandpa Cal State Long Beach” announced last week that it will require freshmen to pull his finger beginning in fall 2010. A new requirement will force freshmen to live in residential quarters during their first year of attendance. That is, those who are not clever enough to garner one of the exceptions to the ridiculously exclusionary rule.
By exclusionary, of course, we’re referring to low-income, first-generation students; the ones who likely already have a rigid budget that will be erased if they are forced to live on campus at more than $10,000 per year.
We’re not blasting creative administrators for trying everything possible to fill a massive budgetary hole. After all, CSULB took an enormous hit with all of this year’s vacancies — estimated earlier to be around 400 beds — because that loss of housing revenue minimally exceeds $4 million.
The argument given to the Daily 49er that turning dorms into a de facto concentration camp will “move Cal State Long Beach past the identity of a commuter campus” doesn’t carry water. It’s all about money no matter how much prosaic spin is placed on the policy.
In years past, on-campus housing has been way oversold, typically creating waitlists with thousands of names. But having resident halls filled to capacity has never helped CSULB overcome its commuter campus image. The majority still commutes.
Excuse the hyperbole, but, historically, forcing people to live in a specific area has never elicited a sense of community beyond a shared resentment against those wielding the power of hegemony.
It didn’t work during the Warsaw ghetto or Japanese internments during World War II, and American Indians certainly didn’t feel warm and fuzzy when they were forced onto reservations.
Many students will attest that living on campus is more expensive than living independently off campus. During a down economy that promises less for more in education, wallet weary students must be wallet wary.
The requirement itself presents problems that could target low-income students disproportionately. By the time financial aid recipients pay for registration and residential housing, nothing will be left for incidentals like textbooks, clothing and transportation. This will assuredly place extra financial burdens on their families and will force many to take extra jobs, commit to larger student loans or drop out.
The caveat that freshmen wishing to live off campus must demonstrate a need in which “each circumstance will require documentation and proof” is demeaning. It removes any semblance of treating new college students as adults deserving the right to choose freely where and how they wish to live.
Not only will freshmen be barred from finding cheaper off-campus housing, they have literally no choice about who they live with. You don’t get to choose your roomies.
Whenever a flock of academics form a brain trust, one can most certainly expect to hear — and smell — ginormous brain flatulence.
Albeit well meaning, the decision to force students living on their own for the first time to live in dorms really stinks up the proverbial CSULB elevator.
“Grandpa Cal State Long Beach” needs to find a gag that doesn’t require gullible freshmen to pull his finger.
