Q&A with the Daily Bruin

  Taylor Ettema, a first-year student
resides in a Dykstra Hall lounge, while discussing housing
issues.

Interview conducted by Cuauhtemoc Ortega, Daily Bruin Senior
Staff.

DB: How did you first find out that you were living in a
Dykstra Hall floor study lounge?

TE: Well, my first notification during the summer told me I had
a triple in Dykstra. A few weeks later I received another
notification saying my room was “10L” and that
I’d only have one roommate ““ I was never actually told
that it was a lounge. I thought that maybe I was put in a double,
so I called the Housing Office about a week later. They told me
that I was in a lounge, and that I would have between four and five
roommates.

DB: What were your thoughts after learning this?

TE: I was disappointed, since I went from hopes for a double to
the possibility of being placed together with four or five other
people. I have friends in the same situation, so I knew I
wasn’t alone. My parents were pretty upset. Their primary
concern, of course, was my academic performance ““ they
assumed such an environment could only hurt it.

DB: I assume you’re being charged differently for this
type of living arrangement?

TE: Yes, we’re being charged the price of a double. My
original housing information placed me in a triple. Since then,
I’ve received an additional bill for $240, adjusting my rate
to that of a double. They justified this by saying each person in
the lounge has personal square footage comparable to a double.
Under their rationale, we each have more room than a student living
in a triple, so they charged us more.

DB: Did the housing office give you an indication of how
long you will be in the lounge?

TE: They’ve given us an array of different dates. At
first, it was supposed to be “temporary quarters” for
two to three weeks, or by the end of the quarter at the latest.
We’ve been informed that the housing contractors will finish
De Neve by January in time for Winter quarter, but rumors have been
circling here that it won’t even be finished this year. Since
then we’ve been offered three options: 1) stay in the lounge
until De Neve is open, 2) stay until another room in a different
hall becomes open, or 3) place ourselves on the priority list to
move out immediately.

We opted to stay in the lounge until De Neve opens. This puts us
in the lounge until at least the end of the quarter.

DB: How do you think your social and academic experience has
been different from that of your peers?

TE: We’re certainly not in equal settings. Two people in a
small, quiet room versus five people in a large, lounge-type
setting ““ there’s definitely a different environment.
It’s much easier for two people to agree on study time and
noise than it is for five people.

Academically, I’ve tried my best to adjust. Any
school-related work usually has to be taken elsewhere. Socially …
it’s quite an experience. We’re five people, each with
different schedules and our own lives, and coordinating those lives
can get pretty challenging.

DB: In what ways are other people on the floor being
affected by your occupying the lounge?

TE: Well, we are living in what was previously designed to be
study space, so we’re all affected by this. Even though we
have our own rooms, we can’t study in a convenient location
by our rooms. It forces us to go outside and walk distances we
wouldn’t have to walk otherwise. The social atmosphere that
was the study lounge has now become our room ““ a private
living space.

  PRIYA SHARMA/Daily Bruin Taylor Ettema
(bottom left) reads in his lounge residence with two of his four
roommates. DB: How much of a correlation do you think exists
between adequate housing and performance in school?

TE: Adequate housing plays a strong roll in academic success.
One of the primary reasons I decided to live on campus was that
classes are only 15 minutes away. I also read statistics stating
that students who live on campus generally do better than their
counterparts. So I thought I’d take advantage of UCLA housing
““ only to find out I’d be in a study lounge with four
other people.

DB: Have your feelings about UCLA changed since you found
out about your housing situation?

TE: The image of the school that I had concerning how well they
take care of incoming freshmen and undergraduate students has been
affected by this. I’m getting the feeling that I’m
being crammed into the quarters that make it most convenient and
financially beneficial to the school. I feel like they’re not
taking us into consideration.

DB: Did you see this at all coming before you applied to
UCLA?

TE: Oh no, I had no idea. The most important thing is the school
itself and what it represents. I do know that housing is a separate
entity from UCLA, so the school itself is not so much directly
involved with housing, even though the student is involved in both
academic and residential life. But it’s too bad that housing
can’t prevent things like this from happening. They seem to
be doing whatever is convenient for them ““ but putting five
people in one room would never be an option if I were running the
housing office.

DB: It’s likely that the housing situation will become
more difficult not only for UCLA, but for all UC campuses,
considering enrollment is expected to increase by more than 60,000
students in the next 10 years UC-wide. As a student already
affected by the housing shortage, what do you think UCLA should do
to prepare for this in terms of housing?

TE: If UCLA is going to guarantee housing for all incoming
freshmen, they need to be able to uphold that contract without
having to compensate the quality of student life for increased
enrollment. It’s great that UCLA is so popular, and so long
as the faculty is not overburdened, the university should let in as
many students as they deem appropriate. But upholding their
guarantee for first-year housing should be taken pretty
seriously.

Since housing is so important to academics, the university
should continue to guarantee housing to all incoming freshmen and
ensure that they have adequate facilities ““ putting students
in lounges is not very effective. If we have to have nothing but
triples until the complex is finished, then I think that should be
done, rather than keeping the lounge, which resembles military
bunking.

DB: I’m sure you’re aware that the housing
problem extends beyond on-campus housing. Housing prices off-campus
in UCLA’s surrounding communities have been increasing over
the last few years. What are your thoughts about this?

TE: I’m not very optimistic about housing after leaving
the dorms. As it is, I’m in a room holding five people with
virtually no privacy and barely adequate facilities, while being
overcharged. Once I’m out of here, my options are to rent an
expensive apartment or to drive from home. But I’m not sure
that I could even drive here from home because I wouldn’t
have anywhere to park.

DB: What do you think the student government’s role
should be dealing with this issue?

TE: The best action they could take is to tackle issues that
affect freshmen more aggressively. I mean, we just go here and
we’re finding ourselves in the middle of this huge housing
mess. It would be helpful if the student government tried to
oversee this and made sure people in authority know that what we
have is not right and it should be prevented.

DB: Do you feel the housing office is being receptive to
your concerns?

TE: I just know that I’m supposed to contact my RA with
any problems. In the meantime, the housing office is trying to buy
us over with free T-shirts and goodie-bags.

DB: Is there anything you would like the housing office to
do that they’re not doing now?

TE: Actions speak louder than words; it would be nice to have a
building to move into. I hope the housing office focuses all their
efforts on getting this done so that this ordeal can be
overcome.