I usually do not write op-eds. Here at the Student Voice I am a reporter and an investigator. As I see it, my job is to cut through the rumors swirling around campus by finding concrete facts about what is happening at BYU-Hawaii. Before I publish anything I must do real research on the question, find the people who know the truth, and give all sides a fair chance to share their take on the situation. Over the last few weeks this has meant hours of zipping across campus snapping pictures, arranging interviews, and talking with students, BYU-Hawaii employees, and administration officials to find out the real story behind this semester’s housing crisis.
We have published two articles on the issue and I am satisfied that they explain everything interested students need to know in order to understand why single students are living in TVA, freshman are living off campus, or where all the male tenants in Hale 2 went. These articles have been the most popular pieces the Student Voice has yet published. As I put them together, however, I realized that they did not answer an equally important question: Why are students angry about this anyway?
Four families and 20 single freshmen were offered much better deals than the University would normally offer them. Four families—just four—were harmed by Housing’s decision. This is a really small number. Even if—as one TVA tenant who lives close to Building C reported to me earlier this week---the neighborhood’s environment has declined since the freshmen moved in, the number of people affected by this is very small. It has no immediate impact on the majority of TVA tenants. It has no effect whatsoever on the two thousand students living in the Hales or off-campus. So why are so many students upset?
It is possible that the student body of BYU-Hawaii simply uses any excuse it can get to complain and vent about the school. “Haters gonna hate” the song says—and I think there is some truth to that. But this is just half an answer. It is a classic example of a logical fallacy known as “begging the question.” Saying that students are just using the housing crisis as an excuse to express their anger does not explain why so many students are angry in the first place.
The truth is that the anger with the Housing Department is not really about housing. This has been a common theme across almost all of the interviews and conversations I have had with students about the problem. Students at this university are in a tight spot: we are reminded regularly how lucky we are to be studying at a university established by the Lord, subsidized by the Church, and offering the full suite of benefits that comes from possessing an American bachelor’s degree. We know that there are a hundred other people who would eagerly take our spot at the school if they were given the chance. Most of us are incredibly grateful to be here. But beneath this gratitude is a deep—and usually hidden— feeling of insecurity.
The three years we spend at BYU-Hawaii are described—often by the same voices that remind us how blessed we are to be here—as a time that will define our future careers and livelihoods. I believe students take that seriously. They feel that the decisions which decide the university’s future will have a permanent impact on their own. It does not take long before this feeling leads to an unsettling realization: they have no control over these decisions. By choosing to come to this university students put their futures in the hands of a system whose inner workings are hidden and whose actions they cannot influence or control.
You know what? That kind of sucks. It is easy to become frustrated when you feel like your education, your finances, or your living conditions are being manipulated by an authority that you cannot control, does not stick to its own rules, or is prone to making mistakes. We should not be surprised when that frustration explodes into strong expressions of shock and anger—as we have seen this year when the university unexpectedly cut programs, announced a new academic calendar, and slipped-up with housing. All of these things seem to confirm the student body's worst fears about how their future is being decided. If the entire student body is up in arms because one building in TVA has been turned over to singles or that all of the male students have been evicted from Hale 2, it is because these things are seen as evidence that the university’s rules and procedures are arbitrary and subject to sudden change, its officials and administrators are not accountable for the mistakes they make, and that the students have no voice when decisions that change their daily life are being made. As long as students feel like the decision making process at this school is opaque, error prone, and unresponsive to their needs then these outbursts of anger will continue.
Now I am not sure things are quite as bad as many students perceive. I think there are more ways the students can shape what happens at this university than they realize, but few of my fellow students share this optimism. Why should they? This semester’s housing crises has given them one more reason to doubt the institution they have trusted their futures with.