Your student ID and all your savings, please

By ANDIE TARABZOONI — rmtarabzooni@ucdavis.edu 

When I was first deciding on a college at the ripe young age of 17, I had taken into account the fact that no matter where I went, I refused to live in a place similar to my sister’s $2,000 a month 300-square-foot apartment in Boston, Massachusetts. My top three school options were in three different locations: Boston, Los Angeles and — well, you guessed it — Davis. Yet despite me going for the relatively cheapest area cost-of-living wise, I still find myself in awe at the housing crisis in Davis. 

During my first year at Davis, I lived in student housing. There were many great memories, but my favorite has to be the amount of times they told me to live at The Green. Part of me considered it. But then I saw the $22,000 price tag that comes with a now nine-to-10 month lease and went, “Maybe not.” Nothing against The Green; it’s not them, it’s me. But I just feel a little deluded for trying to make myself feel like this is all normal. I’ve heard with financial aid it’s a lot more affordable — same with Orchard Park. But what if you don’t have access to that. What then? Accept the bargain of $2500 a month? Or try to work around student-based housing? 

I have scoured the Internet to see what the case is at other UCs… it’s really not looking great anywhere. Perhaps we aren’t the worst case, but God, does it get bad. Someone had recently told me that when they visited UCSB, the apartments were not only double the price they’d be in Davis but felt like shoe boxes. This is a prominently student-filled apartment complex so it seems like the market for students is worse than ever. When it comes to other schools like UCLA and UC Berkeley, I can only imagine how much you have to pay as someone trying to live there as a regular tenant, let alone a student. 

So, do students tend to pay more? I could not find any data to follow this up, so we’re using opinion and observation here. The first lease I signed at Davis required me to send over a lot of schooling-related documents since I didn’t have a social security number. But this was a similar protocol for places close to campus with jacked-up prices. Prove you’re a student, and you somehow end up paying $3k for a studio. But, that’s not necessarily the truth. Maybe they just want you to prove you’re a student to prove you need somewhere to live. But a lot of the time, I feel tempted to ask how much Davis residents pay for rent. Nonetheless, if you want more affordable housing it feels like a nightmare. 

One of my very good friends recently documented their experience trying to sign a lease in North Davis. They camped from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next morning to sign a lease. That feels horrid. For the reward of a lower rent, you spend a school day camping in the cold to not even be guaranteed a lease. Isn’t that kind of cruel? Why is housing in college towns so weird and twisted? I personally signed my lease via email, but I also never got to tour. So, you win some and you lose some. None of the housing for students in college towns seems to be worth it. 

For unfurnished, inaccessible and barely renovated apartments, I want to be paying with dimes. If I cannot guarantee my carbon monoxide alarm works, why are you making me pay you my entire paycheck? I guess my main question is why do we agree to pay so much for how little we get? I constantly get ads about how cheap it is to live in Thailand, and maybe I’ll take it up if rent goes up. What made landlords so evil? Why do you not want to give me my security deposit?

I think back to “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” in times like this — “We accept the love we think we deserve.” But instead, we accept the apartments we think we deserve. Maybe I’m nitpicking but what are we paying for in extra fees if maintenance doesn’t show up until we’ve moved out? Maybe the housing market is awful everywhere in the world, maybe everything is awful everywhere. Blame Reagan. But you really feel it in college towns. Finding affordable housing and housing that suits you shouldn’t be this difficult. Especially as your first time being a tenant. 

I suppose the argument stops being “University housing is awful” and becomes “housing is awful” pretty quickly, but I do think there has to be a study done somewhere about why housing is so expensive for students. I know why, but I need it to be factually proven for me. I just cannot grasp the idea that we’ve all accepted this. Can we get a student housing union? Or at least a rent discount? Or a full night’s sleep before leasing day? It’s important to find housing that’s equitable and suitable for you. 

All I can say at this point: don’t settle. There are plenty of fish in the sea. The first apartment you find won’t always be your favorite. Just make sure you’re making choices for yourself rather than just to get leasing “over with.” 

Written by: Andie Tarabzooni — rmtarabzooni@ucdavis.edu

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.

Every four years, the environment at school gets really weird…I wonder why

By JOAQUIN WATERS — jwat@ucdavis.edu 

The first time I recall being vaguely interested in the goings-on of American politics was in 2012. I was nine years old, and all I really understood with any clarity was that former President Obama was being challenged by a rich guy named Mitt Romney. I had a nebulous understanding of the American political system (history was one of my favorite topics in school), but at that age, none of my peers or I really grasped what was going on in Washington, DC. Terms like “Super PAC,” “Republican primary” and “electoral college” might as well have been some other language spoken by news anchors and grown-ups at dinner. That was in another world, one far more complicated than the one most American schoolchildren inhabited.

Four years had passed before the next election cycle, and when you’re a kid, quite a lot changes in four years. At that point, I was thirteen, and as my peers and I now had one foot in the adult world, we were starting to understand the mysterious language of politics. We were expected to, after all. So, as the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton began to heat up, my school staged a mock election. Certain eighth-graders who volunteered would play the roles of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates (third-party as well as Democrat and Republican) and post little flyers all over the school. On election day (which coincided with the real date), the student body was encouraged to go to the cafeteria and vote for whichever “candidate” we liked the most. We were also encouraged not to necessarily be influenced by what we had seen in the news or by our parents’ political affiliations. 

It was a noble goal — they simultaneously tried to teach us about critical thinking and the electoral process. But, even in an academic setting, it was impossible not to be influenced by the ever-growing cacophony of propaganda we were bombarded with from every possible angle. As election day 2016 grew closer, the environment at school began to change drastically. I remember two kids who walked around campus with “InfoWars” stickers on their backpacks, declaring their allegiance to one of the foremost right-wing conspiracist cults of our time. I remember many more who wore Bernie Sanders stickers well after the candidate in question lost the Democratic primary. In addition to the ever-present memes and video game playthroughs, our YouTube viewing now included sermons from (depending on the viewer) John Oliver or Alex Jones. A few weeks before the election, I had a falling out with a friend who, seemingly overnight, had become a virulent racist who regularly mocked my Latino heritage while insisting he was “joking.” 

Then election day came around, and everything really changed. Half of the student body walked around as if in mourning, the other half with disturbingly genuine victorious grins. One of my friends (like myself, no older than thirteen) greeted me that morning with a grim proclamation: “RIP America.” Beyond that, nobody wanted to talk about any of it, including the staff. That afternoon, an announcement from the principal went out telling us to refrain from bullying on account of political beliefs. That did not happen — on either side — but there were no further announcements on the subject. School, which was allegedly meant to be a non-judgmental place of learning, had transformed into an ideological warzone nearly as potent as the one in Washington itself, yet post-election day, the staff did not seem interested in engaging with that change in the slightest.

Fast forward four years later, and another election cycle was underway. Once again, we held a mock election. Naturally, it was over Zoom (which meant no more printed-out flyers all over campus), but that was far from the only difference. In 2016, there was a naive enthusiasm for our mock election cycle. We were faux-intellectual tweens then, proudly waving our flags because they made us feel more educated, less like children. In 2020, we really were more educated. None of the words drifting from the news channels in our locked-down homes sounded like gibberish anymore. We were painfully aware of the seriousness of the coming election. And nobody wanted to play-act it anymore. Nobody wanted to pretend to be Donald Trump or Joe Biden. And there was a sense that the teachers and staff didn’t particularly want to discuss the election either. We were all of us walking on eggshells. We proceeded with it only out of obligation, but it cast quite a pall over the already-hampered academic environment our teachers were trying to cultivate. 

Now here I am, about to enter my senior year at UC Davis, and another election cycle is underway. Perhaps the most important election in our lifetime is on the horizon. Global fascism is on the rise, conservative lawmakers continue to strip people of their rights and the United States is at an ideological crossroads not seen since the onset of the Civil War. This time, there will be no mock election for us. We’ll cast our votes for real. And even here, in college, I feel that old wariness and hesitation to broach the subject begin to set in. 

In many ways, it’s good that my generation became so politically aware at such a relatively young age. We know where we stand, and we’re willing to fight for it. And I believe that we must not let the unpleasantness of the current political environment further hamper academic spaces. Schools are becoming complacent toward politics, and the more volatile they become, the more complacent they become. The American education system must find a way to positively engage with the subject outside of meaningless mock-election cycles that teach kids nothing and, if anything, actively further the negative attitude toward politics among student bodies. I don’t have an answer for this; I don’t think there is an easy one. But apathy begets apathy, and there should be no place for it in educational environments.

Written by: Joaquin Waters — jwat@ucdavis.edu 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.