Cal Poly Humboldt Students Protest After Admin Changes Housing Policy and Adds Enrollment
Hundreds of students turned out to protest a Cal Poly Humboldt decision that would displace them from on-campus housing next semester. | Photo by Ollie Hancock
Yesterday, hundreds of students poured into the quad at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata voicing their passionate opposition to a new policy announced by the administration which prioritizes on-campus dorms for Freshmen and transfer students while requiring returning students to either find their own housing or use motel rooms that are being called bridge housing.
According to the University,
One example of bridge housing is from this past Fall 2022 when upperclassmen had the opportunity to live at the Comfort Inn in Arcata. Surveys and conversation with current residents in our campus-managed off-site housing have shown their satisfaction with this option. Students have shared their appreciation of the convenience of the location, its strong connection with the community and local businesses, and the extra amenities, such as breakfast, cleaning service, and a grocery store within walking distance. Students enjoy these amenities as well as a reduced cost of housing (which will be $3,312 per semester for Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 semesters respectively).
But students argue that the bridge housing is not enough to provide a place for the approximately 2000 students residing on the campus now. They note that the motels offered so far are three miles from campus making transportation necessary. And, parking on campus is already difficult.
A number of students at Cal Poly Humboldt are already homeless. This video below interviews a number of them.
Cal Poly Humboldt is under pressure to increase enrollment. According to Cal Matters, “Any campus missing its enrollment target by 10% or more will permanently lose up to 5% of its state enrollment funding, which will then be sent to campuses exceeding their enrollment targets. This won’t go into effect until 2024-25 at the earliest, giving campuses time to plug their enrollment gaps.”
Early last fall, the University said, “Cal Poly Humboldt expects to see enrollment increase 50% within three years and 100% within seven years.” And in November they said, “The application season opened Oct. 1 and to date, first-time undergraduate applications have risen 86% since last year.”
All those new students need beds and, students already in dorm rooms are now being told they’ll need to move off campus to provide room for the incoming students.
Thus the protest yesterday.
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- At 11 am on Wednesday, Cal Poly Humboldt students took to the quad to speak out against an unexpected decision limiting dorms to incoming freshman and new transfer students. | Photo by Ollie Hancock
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- By noon the quad was packed with student chanting, cheering, and demanding adequate housing. Student organizers provided a list of demands and offered an open mic to voice concerns. Photo by Ollie Hancock
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- Jules Tatum holds a sign calling for President Tom Jackson to resign at the Wednesday protest in the quad. Photo by Ollie Hancock
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- Two students, local student musicians Mushroom Jack and Mushroom Evan, riled up the crowd with parody songs lamenting living in moldy dorms and run down motels. Photo by Ollie Hancock
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- Students brandished signs voicing frustrations and anxieties from the situation. Chalk messages reading “Cal Poly Sellout,” were scrawled on buildings and across sidewalks. Photo by Ollie Hancock
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This is a great opportunity for the funding units, I mean students, to learn the harsh realities of life. Money is the highest priority to the state education bureaucrats and CPH. And they’ll chase that money no matter how many people are made homeless. And it’s not just students, plenty of locals will be left out in the cold as the newly displaced students compete for the limited housing that’s available.
We should not encourage frosh and sophs to attend state universities. Instead they should be completing core requirements via AP, CLEP testing, JCs, and remote learning. This will save parents and students a huge amount of $ and radically reduce the stress on universities’ resources. A lot of winnowing occurs during the 1st 2 years of university so restricting undergrads to junior and senior years will radically reduce the # of students universities have to deal with.
Remote learning has never been easier with stuff like ChatGPT and it should be used as much as possible at the university level.
Wrt off campus housing, make building and renting housing less legally difficult ( more attractive and less burdensome to investors) and the market will respond efficiently.
Haven’t these students heard of bikes? Why are all of them acting like they need a car to go a few miles? Seems like the educational indoctrination isn’t working too well in that regard …
Yes, this is incredibly short sighted on the side of the University, bu these kidz gotta buck up for the real world.
Kind of rains a lot here. I can’t imagine having to show to class everyday drenched in sweat.
That’s the response, rain?
Wow, how PRIVILEGED.
The issue isn’t riding a bike a few miles, a lot of students, myself included, already walk or bike to campus everyday. The issue is that there is extremely limited housing available. Theres usually only a handful of places available in arcata, and theres also limited options in surrounding areas. Should students have to commute an hour or more to come to class everyday to avoid being homeless? Or maybe sleep in a tent so that they may ride their bike to school every morning?
Glad that its my last year here, so I don’t have to deal with this bs, or ignorant comments from people like you.
But the NIMBYs don’t want any more development, however, I’m sure the same ppl will be on here complaining about the governments and CSU administrations failure to provide affordable housing.
Well, they do have a forest area… They could punch out there and build Santa Cruz style dorms… Does anybody else remember how UCSC looked when it was built?
Other than that, I recommend an actual visit to the campus you are considering, before you enroll, and the transition to “Cal Ploy Humboldt kinda came out of the fog, as if it was dreamed up by Huffman…
It’s a stupid man that packs a tiny campus with too many students, all at once…
Kids, there’s literally a thousand other options, and if I could pick any school, it would be somewhere that offered Non-profit Organizational Management, and Internet Marketing degrees… Or Pepperdine…
I think a 60’s style “camp-in” should be held until the end of Spring Term… Right there under everyone’s nose!
Have fun in college!
Pepperdine…? I hear housing and life in Malibu is affordable….?
I c what you did there
That makes no sense. The people who don’t want development in their own backyard in this case simply have no use for the development at all.
I think this whole train wreck coming is a resulting of poor leadership and thus planning. The City of Arcata is too busy deciding in what order the flags should be above city hall… Humboldt State, Cal Poly or whatever has shown next to nothing regarding a viable plan and like the city, any leadership. The only folks drooling over this are the developers and landlords. It’s too bad that they don’t see the train coming, because it’s coming in hot…btw can you imagine trying to find parking in and around Arcata in the near future (already bad) – we won’t be going there! Good luck to those involved – the developers and landlords are remodeling their bank accounts to make room for all the extra money that they’ll be receiving! Chooo-choooooo!
Yes. I know many grow rooms being shut down and turned into rental rooms at this very moment. It is the next stage of transition-from plants to renters- both students and those displaced by students. Should be a few years of very high rents before the Craftsman gets built or the Gateway even begins! Anybody with extra houses in Arcata area is very stoked at this windfall. I know people who are renting out their houses and leaving the area, using rental management professionals. Sorry that all the real estate out in the country is now worth 2 pennies at most…but we all saw this coming for a decade, right?
The “nimbys” do want more development. They just don’t want it to becat the expense of the enviornment and it needs to be AFFORDABLE
Remember about 10 years ago when students who were a few years in couldn’t get the classes they needed as the classes offered were focused on the new crop of students? Is Calpoly/Humboldt state just focused on the funding from new students or is the whole Cal system set up to function this way?
Simple solution….shut the university down…..permanently. See how easy solutions can be…
I was in emergency housing before the semester started, I was able to stay on campus for 3 weeks. For 2 of those weeks I was ill and noticed black stuff dripping from the fan above the stove. After attending the strike turns out black mold has been a problem on campus for decades. Someone who got up to speak mentioned it’s interesting that CPH will hire people to come on campus and spray down the chalk on campus written to protest the poor housing and complete lack of housing, but won’t have anyone come to take care of the black mold that’s been on campus for decades. Accepting money for “on-campus” housing knowing that they wouldn’t have space for everyone in on-campus should not have been made the student’s problem. They are undoubtedly responsible for some of their student’s having to experience houselessness.
40 + year old campus housing, needs to be replaced.
Buyer beware. Research your college choices before you give them your money. This is the 1st real-life lesson these students are learning. Unfortunately they didn’t have a cynical adult in their life to help them learn this important life lesson earlier…all colleges do this, not so much to this extent but they re all geared to recruit above their ability to house or teach effectively. I’m not excusing the administration but I am also holding the parents of the students to blame for not seeing this ahead of time. Cover your own shit, people! Stop trusting blindly in institutions and government to “do the right thing”!! How many examples do ya need?!
The whole area of Mendocino and Humboldt is full of black mold. It’s a damp dank area that gets no sunlight and it always has been. If you like books and records, get ready for them to mold.
Love the pictures, they give you a feel for what it was like at the demonstration.
Back in the day, I remember that we were forced to live in dormitories our freshman year. The idea was that it would facilitate the transition to living away from home for the 1st time for freshman so that they didn’t need to worry about things like finding an apartment, dealing with landlords, paying utility bills, shopping for groceries, cooking meals, finding roommates, transportation to campus, etc. Each floor of the dorm had a resident assistant (RA) to keep the frivolity down to a dull roar and as an interface to university housing authorities.
We were so eager to get out of the dormitories and get off campus after freshman year, I guess so we could do our thing.
Putting freshmen in dorms was a good idea back then and still is.
as long as there is affordable and available housing off campus.
No matter what, freshmen should get higher priority for the dorms.
Not enough “affordable and available housing” is a huge problem in California for both student and non students. We should try to figure that out for the general public instead of relying on specific industries to build their own housing.
The point being that you shouldn’t enroll more people than there is space to house them anywhere nor should the State apply financial pressure for a college to increase enrollment to satisfy a political agenda without having assured being able to house them first. Beside the volume of students is not a reflection of the value of that education. A technical, scientific or difficult course of study will certainly have a smaller enrollment than a general course but the value of educating those students may be something worth a higher cost.
.
https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2023/01/college-enrollment-decline-csu-funding-penalty/
I think everyone has forgotten that freshmen are fresh from living with mom and dad. They really don’t have adult skills yet being fresh out the cradle for the first time. I think housing them in dorms with rules and an RA is a very good idea.
I realize they are all babies. I just think the newborns might need a little extra to have a chance.
I suppose that is One reason that the universities should not have over enrolled.
It would have been better to do a slower roll out so the infrastructure was there.
I hope they do an orientation explaining some things to these kids no matter where they are housed for safety reasons. Basic stuff like “don’t wander off with strangers” “don’t turn your back on the ocean” “carry a lantern at night” and “biology is real”
This is a great opportunity to learn about economics and the consequences of government induced market bubbles in a micro-economic enviroment.
Bingo.
Why is KHSU off air for more than 24 hours? Poor as it is, it is my only source for NPR
https://www.npr.org/podcasts-and-shows/
I am with the students on this one. How can the university admit more students before it houses the students already enrolled? I could not believe the reports of students camping or living in cars. That’s not what university life should be.
Out with the old, and in with the new…
Cal Polyp Humboldt is a cancerous, abnormal growth
What an all around complete*hit *how this is.
Have yet to regret leaving HSU/CPH, Arcata, and CA a few years ago. 3rd generation Californian here…the place is crazy out of control awful.
Housing was a problem in the late 80’s, but I was fortunate enough to be able to afford to drive the fourteen miles each way.
One issue with an interview on tv yesterday of a young female student: she seems to feel that living in a somewhat decent motel is the same as being homeless. I would suggest she go around to any of the local homeless encampments, just to get a grip on that reality. In fact, offer to switch places!??
What am I missing? I thought it was common practice at colleges and universities that (for the most part) on campus housing was only for incoming freshmen??
What a Charlie Foxtrot…
And yet they want to double the enrollment?
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2023/feb/9/cal-poly-humboldt-exploring-idea-housing-students/
Put em on a barge…
Ukraine, grift… the usual.
Aren’t university students adults? Aren’t they going to college to learn life skills and problem solving?
So what are these mouth-breathers and slack-jawed parasites bringing to the table as far as solutions instead of sniveling about the problem?
Sounds like the current Democrat administration in White House….
“Shit is fucked up, but it ain’t our fault!”
Cal-Poly out of Humboldt before the students ruin Arcata. I cannot believe the hippies let Cal-Poly in with out a plan.