LAIE—On August 11th Christian Karnawan and 41 other male students living in Hale 2 were invited to come to the Hale lobby for a special meeting with the building’s RAs and a few officials from the BYU-Hawaii Housing department. Hale 2, they were told, was being converted to an all-female dorm. They had one week to pack up their belongings and move somewhere else.
Karnawan—who normally goes by his nickname, Tian—had lived in Hale 2 for over a year. This was his last semester at the school and he looked forward to moving out of the Hale and away from the university right after the block ended. For him, the announcement that he must move twice this month was an unwelcome surprise. “I had no idea that they had these plans. The weekend they want us to move is the same weekend I take my GREs. The week after that is finals. How am I supposed to find the time to study and move? The whole situation was hard to believe.”