When discussing student rights, it’s easy to get caught in the flowery rhetoric of concepts like justice, equal representation and a slew of other democratic buzzwords that look damn good on picket signs, T-shirts and campaign buttons.
It’s rare, though, that students get the opportunity to feel the burn of disenfranchisement. Generally, we’re afforded more rights than we even know.
Yet a prime example of injustice ‘mdash; real life, stripped-of-your-rights, kicked-to-the-curb injustice ‘mdash; has been right underneath our noses since each of us began our college careers here at UCSD. The source: our campus housing contract.
Amid four pages of waivers, guidelines, regulations and notices, the contract contains a single line that allows the university to evict its campus tenants at any time without any formal reason.
By agreeing to the contract, students effectively sign away their rights to due process, bestowing upon the university complete control over the status of their residency.
In a perfect world ‘mdash; where administrative mistakes and the behavioral shortcomings of bloated residential officials are nonexistent ‘mdash; this arrangement wouldn’t be too troubling.
Yet administrators make mistakes, and sometimes they even ‘mdash; gasp! ‘mdash; abuse their power.
Just last quarter, a student was evicted from his Earl Warren College apartment based solely on the testimony of a Residential Security Officer, who claimed the student displayed symptoms of marijuana consumption in an exchange between the two.
At a judicial-board hearing two months after his removal from campus, the student presented drug tests proving that he had not engaged in the use of any illicit substances.
It would require a unique stubbornness to claim that this incident doesn’t indicate a flaw in our housing system’s infrastructure. Students are being evicted without the opportunity to defend themselves and punished without any proof of misconduct.
It doesn’t end there. Write-ups are issued based on the same principles: convict first, ask questions never. And when questions are asked, it’s usually too late ‘mdash; as in the case of the aforementioned Warren College student.
This contract must be thoroughly reexamined.
Students deserve the right to defend themselves against charges that harm their reputations and our administrators should be obligated to provide this right.