The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Dorm life

  • Recent break in at the campus apartments leads to questions of safety of the Cal Poly Humboldt dorms

    Recent break in at the campus apartments leads to questions of safety of the Cal Poly Humboldt dorms

    by Alina Ferguson

    During the summer of 2022, a unit of the campus apartment complex was broken into. The police were able to find and arrest the burglar. Executive Director of Auxiliary Operations Stephen St. Onge explained that the units were unoccupied during the break in and no students were harmed. 

    “Unfortunately when the Campus Apartments are not occupied, they become a target,” St. Onge said. 

    The Campus Apartments were not originally part of the campus. According to St. Onge, the building was bought to build infrastructure. 

    “The purchase of Campus Apartments, it was going to be for temporary housing,” St. Onge said. “Then the building was gonna be taken down and then an academic building was going to be put there.”

     Due to its origins, the building is outward facing, easily accessible from the footbridge that leads to Arcata. There is no gate and the doors to the bedrooms are what people see first.  These apartments do not use a key card to get in. Instead, they use a physical key issued to each student. 

     St. Onge mentioned that there is a rather robust camera system set up in the complex, lined with over 400 cameras.

    “We spent over 1.2 million dollars on a very robust security system, every entrance to every residence building has a camera on it,” St. Onge said. “If you go to Campus Apartments, I think it’s about 400 cameras.” 

     The surveillance system on campus can track someone’s whereabouts through the whole campus. 

    “If I could pull up a camera, you could see how detailed those things are,” St. Onge said. “You’re wearing a gray sweater vest right? So we could type into the search parameters, female, brown hair, gray sweater vest and they will- boop boop boop, and you put in a time parameter, and we could walk you across campus.” 

    Other campus housings has camera systems, and College Creek has a gate system. Access to the College Creek dormitory door requires first going through a locked gate. Then, there is an additional key to get into the actual apartment. The system of electric keys makes it safer to live at the apartments. If you lose or misplace your key, you can get it deactivated, which means even if someone picks it up, it cannot be used to gain access into your apartment, unlike the physical keys used for the campus apartments. 

    Since there are plans to demolish the Campus Apartments and replace them between the years of 2028 and 2029, there are no plans to install new safety features in the worn out building. All of the safety measures for Campus Apartments are reactionary safety measures, while other dorms have preemptive safety measures. 

    Jared Van Der Loo, a student at Cal Poly Humboldt, lives at Campus Apartments with three other male students. He said the apartment gets hot and stuffy, and often they will have to leave the screen and the door open, even at night. He said he thinks adding additional measures that other campus dorms have could improve the safety of the Campus Apartments. 

    “I feel somewhat safe in the campus apartments,” Van Der Loo said. “With there being four guys I think we can look out for one another. I also think safety from mold could be improved.” 

    Another student, Ralph Valle, who lives on the third floor of the Campus Apartments, said he personally does feel safe, but as he knows there have been incidents at the school, he is very weary.

    “In my mind I have been prepared for any weirdness,” Valle said. “Almost like a PTSD thing where I am ready to jump if someone tries to get in while I’m inside.” 

  • Upperclassmen, your jealousy is warranted

    Upperclassmen, your jealousy is warranted

    by Elise Fero

    Our lives were in empty dark rooms in the dorms, where sitting in the halls and talking was prohibited. Masks were to be on everywhere. Even the volleyball court outside the building couldn’t be used. We couldn’t be social. The only life we saw on campus was deer.

    This was my experience of freshman year during 2020-2021. Living in a tiny dorm with two bunk beds but no one to fill them; just my emotional support cat Winnie Fig and I, away from home for the first time in a new state. Online classes left the campus completely dead. No one played guitars in the music quad, no one rushed to class on their skateboard, and no one ate in the Depot. 

    Now it’s the Fall of 2022 and here come the incoming freshmen, ready to go to classes in person, to meet new people who aren’t hidden behind masks. What a different experience than my own freshman year. I can’t help but feel as if I have been cheated out of an exponential time in my life. Someone tell me why this is fair!

    Maybe I’m being ridiculous. People died in this pandemic and it affected other lives way more than mine, but I know plenty of others who feel just like I do. Our incredibly expensive education that we spent in our dorm rooms didn’t give us the classic “college experience” that others received before us (and after us.)

    I always imagined college to be the best years of my life, but the pandemic forced us all into silence, into being more antisocial than many of us were to begin with. 

    It’s not as if I didn’t get to have some classic experiences. Even after having COVID-19 during my first week of freshman year, I still found myself on the Lumberjack newspaper staff. During that semester we created a family inside the department, even though we only knew each other through a screen. 

    I have since changed my major multiple times, but the journalism program was my savior when the world shut down. For that I am eternally grateful.

    Now an environmental studies major, I still work for the Lumberjack. I am also starting to  meet people in my new major in-person– just like the freshmen are. 

    My jealousy is a bit extreme, I must admit. These new students are getting the experience I dreamed of. They can go to events without fear. They can dance through the halls of their dorms laughing and talking with other people. They can meet people! My gosh, they can meet people. What an advantage they have, which I didn’t get until this year. 

    It was hard to make friends and I often felt very alone. I remember the only times we saw our friends in those early days were when we snuck into the forest to say hello with our masks on. How scandalous! 

    I’m so happy for the freshmen, I truly am. They get the experience they deserve. And while they lost some of high school, I still think they’re getting the better end of this deal. I wish I missed parts of high school instead! I mean, I hated high school. 

    I know so many people who met the love of their life in college, a hope I always had as a kid. How could I do that while fully online? I just have to believe everything happens for a reason. The freshmen? They have endless opportunities for friends and love and joy in college social life. I wish I had that, too. 

    Let me express my gratitude as well. My freshman and sophomore years were still beautiful experiences that I wouldn’t trade for the world. But for those upperclassmen feeling jealous as you watch freshmen embark on their college journey, you aren’t alone. I promise, you aren’t alone.

  • Dorm students cling to the college experience

    Dorm students cling to the college experience

    Students living on-campus concerned as Humboldt County enters the red COVID-19 tier

    Students living in dorms, on-campus at Humboldt State University received a sliver of the college experience offered in a normal semester.

    Eli Farrington, an undeclared freshman, came to HSU to escape an unhealthy home-life and an unsafe place to live during the pandemic.

    “I think it’s pretty safe [here], compared to where I came from, which is Oakland,” Farrington said. “Which is way less safe in terms of corona.”

    Farrington enjoys having a triple suit all to himself, but he’s nervous about sharing common areas and only goes into the kitchen to do his laundry. Having little in common with his dorm mates, Farrington spends much less time interacting with people than he expected on a college campus.

    “They put me in Tan Oak, which is the student athlete dorm and I’m not a student athlete at all,” Farrington said. “I don’t really have any friends in my dorm.”

    His appreciation for the nature surrounding campus, having friends from Oakland that came to HSU this year and family tension, Farrington plans to continue living on campus in the spring.

    “I’d rather be here than stuck at home with my parents and also [a lot] of my friends have gone off to college too so there’s nothing really waiting for me at home,” Farrington said.

    Lake Mcleod, a political science major, is another freshman experiencing college life behind a screen of a laptop. Mcleod came to campus intending to live every ounce of the traditional college experience as possible.

    “Being here is helping me experience new things,” Mcleod said. “Personally, for me, back home is a different phase that I’ve moved on from. So, being here, I’m able to grow into the person that I really wanted to be.”

    Given that the university has restricted student interaction opportunities this semester, Mcleod feels more of an emphasis should be placed on the behavior of students on campus.

    “I feel like most people are staying as safe as possible but I’ve still seen huge groups and things that are a little questionable,” Mcleod said. “Which the university can’t control everybody, but I feel like it could be a bit better in terms of restrictions.”

    Mcleod’s main concern is the lenient testing regulations for students who leave the area and interact outside of their bubble.

    Students living in the dorms were only tested upon arrival back in August. All testing and quarantining currently operates under an honors system but, Mcleod has personally met people who’ve broken it.

    “Random people that I’ve talked to have said ‘oh yeah, I’ve been here and there’ and it doesn’t sound like they’ve been tested when they come back or they haven’t really been social distancing,” Mcleod said.

    Mcleod was also bothered by HSU hosting San Jose State University’s football team earlier in the semester. Considering how dorm students are restricted to host guests from other areas of housing and no more than two people are allowed at a table in the J’s dining area.

    “I feel like it was hypocritical in a lot of ways,” Mcleod said. “Having a whole football team here from a different county, from [a place with high cases], for them to come over here where we had low cases, that didn’t really sit too well with me and a whole bunch of other people I know.”

    River Ruiz, a political science major, has been living in the dorms for the past three semesters. His biggest reason for returning this semester was his on-campus job with HSU dining services. His experiences this semester led him to begin searching for other employment opportunities.

    “They need to make a lot of improvements,” Ruiz said. “The population is dwindling a lot, so the current workers, they like overload [them].”

    Ruiz will be making separate trips home to Southern California for Thanksgiving and Christmas because he needs to work between the holiday breaks.

    “It’s just crazy,” Ruiz said. “Cause you’re scared that you might come in contact with someone and you can’t go home because you have to quarantine.”

    No longer having the same access to extracurricular activities, Ruiz is grateful to have work as a distraction from school, despite the risks and drawbacks of this semester.

    “I know a lot of people that live on campus and go to school, they just stay here all the time and they don’t really have a good college experience,” Ruiz said. “[This semester is] kind of depressing, but it’s a depressing time and everybody’s getting through it.”

  • Resident Advisors struggle to keep dorm life normal

    Resident Advisors struggle to keep dorm life normal

    Due to the transition to online, campus life is lonelier than ever this semester

    Social distancing policies forces Resident Advisors to rely on tools like social media and video-chatting to stay in touch with students. To make up for the lack of in-person events, housing is putting on several Grab-N-Go programs this semester, where students pick up supplies and participate in door decorating competitions from the safety of their dorms.

    Generally speaking, RA responsibilities include daily room and floor rounds, enforce housing policies and provide connections to resources for students in their building.

    Stephen St. Onge is the associate vice president for student success at HSU. According to Onge, the RA job responsibilities have not changed, besides the move to online.

    The most notable impact of the pandemic on RAs has been on the ability to encourage students to engage with the campus community.

    “They are still doing outreach to their residents virtually,” Onge said. “They are still doing duty rounds, the programming, they are just doing it a little bit differently.”

    Victor Garcia Balderas is a second year RA. Balderas feels the blackouts of last fall and the transition to online in the spring has prepared him as an RA.

    “Because it is my second year as an RA, I feel I have a grasp of how things work,” Balderas said. “I’m flexible and have been hit with so many random events like last year when we had the blackouts.”

    Last semester, Balderas worked with new students. In contrast, this semester he works with returning and transfer students. Balderas says these students tend to already have established their own communities, making engagement much more challenging.

    Director of Residence Life Donyet King believes engaging with students during a pandemic just requires some outside of the box thinking.

    “We have to get really creative about it,” King said. “Initially when programs were held online, people were still adjusting to the pandemic.”

    Despite the efforts of housing to fabricate a sense of normality, the single occupancy policy, while necessary, generates an unavoidable sense of isolation for dorm students.

    “I’ve gotten lonely and a little bit sad,” Balderas said. “I feel like I am alone.”