Cal Poly Humboldt students rallied together on Wednesday in protest against the campus’ apparent housing crisis.
On Saturday, Cal Poly Humboldt updated its Housing & Residence Life webpage, leaving returning students to discover that they may not have a place to live on campus starting next semester, as reported by an article from The Lumberjack.
“Cal Poly Humboldt is exploring temporary housing options for Fall 2020,” Housing & Residence Life wrote in an email to students on Monday.
The email referenced the “bridge housing” program they instated in Fall 2022, where upperclassmen were housed in the Comfort Inn in Arcata.
Due to the growing number of applicants at Cal Poly Humboldt, the university is expanding this program to include the Super 8 and Motel 6 as housing options managed by Cal Poly Humboldt, according to the email.
“At this point, we are looking to add about 1,000 beds to our current housing stock to ensure current students have safe and affordable housing options,” the email said.
However, these changes and programs are receiving heavy backlash from students and parents.
On Thursday, a Tik Tok posted by user @hheeyynene showed video of student protests with a voiceover discussing the housing shortage. The post garnered widespread attention on the platform. The post racked up more than 646,000 views and 111,000 likes.
The Tik Tok shows a large number of students gathered on campus holding signs that criticize the campus’ motel housing programs and express their anger with the institution admitting more students to the university than they can accommodate with housing.
The protests were organized and circulated on Instagram by the page @calpolyhomeless. The page features videos of multiple speakers and images of chalk drawings done during the protests.
User @hheeyynene said in the Tik Tok that prior to Humboldt’s “California Polytechnic” status, there was a major homelessness problem among students, describing on-campus housing as “mold-ridden.”
“For a campus that says they care about the safety of their students and they care about their living, you seem to only care about your money and leave thousands of us on the street,” @hheeyynene said.