By | Reza Sadeghzadeh
There is a health center on campus for students, but there is no place on campus for students to go to when they have a legal issue.
So many students have to deal with greedy landlords, careless employers and lousy customer service. If that’s not enough, some students are now facing racist immigration policies.
We are here to receive a higher education and hopefully be able to build a career from the experiences we gain.
Instead, some of us have to deal with external forces like housing and employment that spoil our learning ability.
There is no plausible reason for a student to be homeless and the University ought to find the root of this problem. More likely than not, homeless students are financially capable of paying rent, but landlords discriminate against some applicants.
The prejudice doesn’t stop there. It’s not just issues in our community, but throughout our nation. Our government’s approach towards immigration is not only racist, but it is also detrimental to our University due to our lack of diversity.
We as a University must act now!
One of our most powerful preemptive recourses in dealing with these external forces is establishing a legal center. We need a place on campus ready to help students with their legal issues so they can worry less and focus more on their academia.
We live in an isolated area with limited legal services and it would cost students an arm and a leg to seek legal counseling.
Luckily, there are some compassionate attorneys in our community who are willing to help. But it is our responsibility to create an organization so we can have access to legal services.
The creation of a legal center should be one of the main goals of Associated Students and it is a bit disappointing that we have not created a mechanism that provides legal remedies for those in need.
The time is now! We must act immediately to create a legal center for the sake of student success.
One Comment
Hundreds of HSU students work for HSU’s private corporation (called an “auxiliary organization”): the University Center/Center Arts/Activities, and Housing and Food Services, many employees are subsidized by federal Work-Study funding, all are told that they are “at-will” employees in violation of the California Education Code, Section 89900c which guarantees due-process rights to all campus workers that are comparable with the state employees.
Being fired without cause is not comparable to state employees.
Workers without due-process rights work under undue fear and favor, wrongly believing they have less protections against injustice, nepotism, favoritism, corruption, harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, etc.
The last thing HSU wants on campus is any kind of legal aid for students.