On Halloween, students living in their vehicles on Cal Poly Humboldt’s campus were met with official eviction notices stating they are: “Required to move their vehicle from university property by noon on Sunday, November 12th.”
This came after the mass email sent on Oct. 25th, claiming that overnight camping created “unsafe” and “unsanitary” conditions.
“To see the students just trying to get an education and being criminalized for wanting to live on campus, and I understand that there’s like, ‘oh, there’s a loophole that you’re living on campus without paying for on-campus living’ but they paid for the parking permit, they paid for what they are using there,” Kenny Lucero, a CPH student said. “They are using their allocated space for whatever it may be, they are still having a vehicle on campus […] whether they’re living in it or not is not the business of the school, that is their business, I feel they’re being intrusive and imposing on students.”
The Alternative Living Club called for students, faculty, and staff to come together and protest the eviction of homeless students on campus, come rain or shine.
“I’m trying to show that they are people and that we do support them and we see nothing wrong with that to help them and not just say, here,” Kieran Stack, a Freshman at CPH said. “We’re going to give you a temporary situation and then longer term, like maybe create a parking pass so that they can live here cause everyone I talked to, no one’s had a problem with them living here, I just want to help them stay here for the rest of the semester in the year.”
Many students living alternatively have expressed that the campus lots are the safest spots for them and that finding housing is an already difficult task in Humboldt County.
“The whole point of an education is for everyone to be treated as intellectual equals, but to treat people as though they’re less because they don’t have the funds, I don’t feel that’s right,” Lucero said. “That shows a lot about where their priorities are, it’s not that the priorities don’t lie with education, they lie with financial incentive.”
“If there’s explicit reasons why the school has a problem with them, to just say them out loud and not hide them behind paragraphs and words and words,” Stack said.
