Keep Our Campus Free of the Homeless
Spencer Grimes | Oct 25, 2011 | Comments 48
Recently I’ve noticed a strange rise in the number of homeless people plaguing our campus. During my first year here at UC Irvine, I never noticed anything out of the ordinary as far as the presence of the homeless is concerned. Sure, there would be the occasional weird-looking guy at the bus stop, but that is to be expected. In the past month of class, however, I’ve witnessed at least two homeless people on campus.
My first homeless person sighting occurred two weeks ago at the local Zot-n-Go. It was my long day of class, and I stopped in to get a quick bite to eat between classes. I met a friend at the tables outside and talked to him briefly before entering. Once I was inside, I noticed an elderly gentleman talking loudly with the cashier. He was dressed in shabby, faded clothing, his face was unshaven, and as I walked past him, I noticed he didn’t smell very good, to put it nicely. I don’t remember exactly what he was saying to the cashier, but I do remember thinking to myself, “Okay, that guy definitely doesn’t have all the lights on upstairs.” He paid for his coffee and walked outside ahead of me. I paid for my snack and walked outside, imagining the look on my friend’s face when I told him about what I had seen.
Suddenly, I looked up toward where my friend was sitting, and I stopped in my tracks. There was the crazy old guy, seated across from my friend and whispering to him in a conspiratorial tone. I hung back, wary of drawing attention to myself, and waited for the man to leave. After less than a minute, he left, and I sat down and asked my friend what the old man had been talking about. Apparently, he just walked up to my friend and said, “You’re Ethiopian, aren’t you?” The weird thing was that my friend was indeed Ethiopian, and he told the old man so. “What did he say after that?” I asked. According to my friend, the old man continued to spout some confused, conspiratorial babble, warning my friend against associating with “white homosexuals” and “undercover terrorist cells,” among other things.
We were both a little weirded out, and we were laughing it off when we heard a voice yelling at us from the portion of Ring Road that borders the Zot-n-Go. It was the same old man! He was walking toward Humanities Gateway, and he must have seen me talking with my friend as he walked past us. He was now yelling at my friend to “keep quiet” and to not “go around sharing what I talked to you about.” Needless to say, we had a source of entertainment for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t quite shake off the sense of dread that I felt when I wondered whether this wasn’t the only crazy person roaming our campus.
I have seen my second “homeless person of note” several times. This particular gentleman seems to have made Langson Library his favorite haunt. The man himself is nothing special at first sight (although he does give off a certain “homeless person” vibe), and I may not have even noticed him if it wasn’t for the three gigantic backpacks the size of laundry sacks that he lugs around with him. I’ve spotted this man either sleeping or reading from a giant stack of books in Langson Library at least half a dozen times, and he is never without his giant bags.
Of course, there’s no way for me to know for sure whether these two men really are homeless, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m sure that our beautiful campus is considered a veritable Valhalla amongst the vagrant masses, and I’m almost surprised that I haven’t seen more homeless people roaming around campus. But this just makes me wonder whether there really are more crazy old guys lurking around campus. This idea makes me especially afraid for any lone students walking around campus at night.
Personally, I know that I would feel a lot better if our campus security forces made an active effort to keep such people away. After all, if skateboarders aren’t even allowed on campus anymore, then I think that we should be rid of the mentally unstable homeless.
A college campus is no place for a homeless person. There is little more distracting to a good library study session than the sight of the disheveled man sitting three chairs away, eyeing his pile of tomes with a strange look in his eye as he props his thin-soled shoes on the three humongous bags that hold all his worldly possessions. I’m not sure what the procedure is for these kinds of things, but if you see a homeless person wandering on campus or lounging in the library, I suggest that you find the nearest campus employee and alert them to the fact. And for those of you traversing the campus alone at night, remember that a college campus (even one in good old, hum-drum Irvine) is just as likely to hold creeps as any other place, and you need to keep your eyes open!
Spencer Grimes is a fourth-year English major. He can be reached at sgrimes@uci.edu.
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I hope he got the chance to talk to some of those homeless people. He IS an English major, after all.
Jokes aside, the fact that mentally ill homeless people are on the streets has its roots in California’s elimination of social services going back to Prop 13 and Reagan’s governorship. California, however, still has mental hospitals; namely, for those declared unfit to stand trial. Those are (mostly) the only facilities California provides – rather than admitting those who actually need help, nurses are forced to care for those who were either unstable enough to hurt somebody or had lawyers good enough to get them off on insanity charges.
Discussing Prop 13′s twin children – the mentally unstable homeless person and the under-educated college student – would have made for an excellent column and a much more enlightening piece for the New U’s readership.
It seems, however, that expecting a student newspaper columnist to ask those systemic questions is perhaps too much to ask.
(In a possibly related incident at another UC, the Daily Bruin can be called a national “pacemaker” in student journalism while a columnist serves up warmed-over, self-referential, misinformed and unreported pap about how OWS participants need to get a job and go to grad school.)
The fact that we have “crazy homeless people” around at Irvine is a failure of the state to not provide a place for them, not an excuse for some bloviating privileged creep masquerading as a serious columnist to get his rhetorical rocks off.
Mr. Grimes (isn’t his name suiting to this story???), I hope you end up homeless someday, so you can feel what its like to be in their shoes, because it is obvious that you are not able to empathize with them. I don’t see why you are so bothered by an increasing presence(two)of homeless, and much less, why you think it is ok to discriminate against them. The moment it is ok to hate or discriminate against one group of people, it opens up the door to hate/discriminate against others as well which makes me wonder if Mr. Grimes expresses hate towards other groups of people as well. I understand that the writer is just expressing his right to free speech, and I am all for freedom of speech, but this has crossed the line from opinion to hate. It is unacceptable, and just goes to show what a bigot he is. I am ashamed and offended to see this type of behavior from a fellow anteater. Mr. Grimes’ article is definitely not a satire, it is a hate filled piece of garbage.
This isn’t a satire, but the person who wrote it will try to play it off as one. So…he is either a terrible and unfunny writer, or a very discriminating and sheltered OC baby.
I didn’t find this funny. Overall it’s tasteless and rude! Either you’re a rich snob or a middle class jerk.. Instead of judging the homeless you should try to help them. And is it that bad to see a homeless man in the library? He’s not entitled to learn and gain knowledge just because he’s homeless? Come on now, the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor is no cause for this kind of animosity towards them.
If this is satire it’s very poorly executed.
If not, it’s an embarrassing commentary on the state of compassion in our increasingly polarized (and increasingly poor) nation. Do two people constitute a “plague”? More importantly, what does it say about this paper that it publishes an article which refers to people as a rampant disease?
Rather than disdain the homeless “plaguing” UCI, it might be more enlightening to consider the plague of poverty currently pushing a growing number of people into homelessness in the first place. That poverty has material causes, in light of which perhaps a bit of sympathy for these two not-so-nice-smelling gentlemen would be in order.
Furthermore, I think this incident’s effect on the author’s concern for late night safety is misdirected, considering that the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults on college campuses is committed by presumably sane, enrolled, middle-class young men with average-to-excellent personal hygiene (which, if I’m not mistaken, is the author’s own demographic).
But the line that truly causes me to cringe is the declaration that “A college campus is no place for a homeless person.” What, I wonder, is “a place for a homeless person”? Under bridges? In some impoverished area where we quarantine the less fortunate and pretend they don’t exist until we need to do community service or buy drugs? The fact is that in this country, and especially in this area, there is no “place for a homeless person.” They’re shooed away from parks and places of business, they’ve got to sneak around to use restrooms and eat, and as a result their very existence is essentially rendered unlawful (unless, of course, they’re satisfactorily quarantined in a shelter or prison). Did the New U consider that before contributing to the further dehumanization of fellow human beings by publishing this article? Did the ability to think critically and with some sensitivity about a horrible situation suffer because your writers and editors are distracted by disheveled people with body odor? Does Mr. Grimes realize that—in addition to the ever-growing number of homeless people due to the economic crisis—the end of the Iraq war will bring home thousands of young men with mental health problems, inadequate health benefits, and no jobs? How many people do you propose we try to push aside before suddenly they become human to you again? Or is the “no place for homeless people” a hard and fast rule?
I, for one, am proud that the homeless feel safe on our campus. Furthermore, I think it’s shameful that we as a nation have chosen to deal with poverty by sweeping it under the rug and essentially asking the poor to bear it and die quietly. If this “plague” of new homelessness has any positive side effect, it’s that poverty may be harder for those without compassion to ignore. In that case, as a student at UCI I’d like to invite more homeless people to come hang out. I hope they cause a great deal of discomfort for the insensitive.
After all, this is a place of learning, and it saddens me to say that recently I’ve noticed a strange rise in the number of ignorant, inconsiderate, intolerant people plaguing our campus.
obviously this dude’s never seen a humanities grad student
“I’m sure that our beautiful campus is considered a veritable Valhalla amongst the vagrant masses.”
Are you implying that these vagrants are dead warriors looking to feast with Odin for the rest of eternity? If you are, I think you may want to address the pending Zombie problem that is threatening the sanctity of the UCI campus.
“I’m sure that our beautiful campus is considered a veritable Valhalla amongst the vagrant masses.”
Are you implying that these vagrants are dead warriors looking to feast with Odin for the rest of eternity? If you are, I think you may want to address the pending Zombie problem that is threatening the sanctity of the UCI campus.
I look forward to another enriching, unbiased, well-informed article!
I’m so glad that I’m not the only one that disagrees with this article. Shouldn’t the issue be why are these people homeless instead of be homeless just not on our campus? There are so many homeless vets, and homeless people just due to the economy. How is their “shabby” clothing relevant to anything? This article was really disappointing and just plain ignorant.
People like you should pay the 81% increase in tuition.
Whether it is satirical or not, it’s tasteless and pointless
If this is “satire,” it’s a really sad reflection on the UCI English department, as the author doesn’t seem to understand how satire actually works. If this isn’t satire, then it is even sadder…
you people are all idiots with no sense of humor .
If it’s humor/satire then what is the point of it? Please explain if it’s so clear to you.
If this is satire, it is done rather poorly. Good satire would propose a solution (albeit a modest one) such as selling the organs of the homeless that roam campus (UCI has a reputation for selling organs) to help bridge the gap in funding and keep student tuition low.
Now THAT’S funny.
Hey Authorman,
This piece must be an attempt at satire.
News flash, you are not the Onion. You bombed hard. The readers don’t lack humor and it’s not over their heads. Your joke is simply tasteless, but you may get a taste of what the UCLA ching chong ling long girl got. Tastes good, eh!
Don’t quit your day job yet funny man.
Oh this made me laugh.
This is going to do awesome things for Spencer when he’s job searching and a simple google search of his work lets his employers know that he’s an intolerant jerk.
If a few homeless people are welcome anywhere, it would be on a university campus where most of us are educated of their plight and unaffected by their presence. Your judgements of others will hold you back in life. They’ll keep you from experiencing the things the rest of us already know or are learning to be true. If you are so bothered by the presence of those who are different from you, may I suggest moving on yourself? You see, public spaces are meant to be shared by all.
If this is a satirical piece, it’s not funny. I don’t even want to consider the possibility that it’s not. If it is satirical, why couldn’t this space have been dedicated to a satire on a bunch of businessmen who decide to raise students’ tuition? You know, something relevant that would actually raise awareness of a problem instead of ridiculing it?
If seeing two homeless people scares you, then yes, I would have to say you do seem like you were probably born yesterday. You wouldn’t feel safe anywhere in the world if you wanted to be completely away from the homeless.
Sure, mentally unstable people exist, and every now and then, you’ll run into one of them — so what? I’m sure there are students or staff on campus that aren’t completely sane either, but that’s life. A college campus is a public place. Practical precautions should be taken, just like anywhere else. Take care of yourself. But did you know that statistics show that mentally ill people are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of crime?
It sounds to me like you’re letting your paranoia get in the way of being a compassionate and understanding human being. Frankly, realizing that people with your attitude roam around our campus is more disturbing than knowing that a couple homeless people exist.
What about students at UCI who are homeless? That happens, you know. School is expensive, and it’s only going to get more expensive now that the Regents want to raise our tuition by 81% over the next four years. Rising tuition forces some students out of their homes even as they work multiple jobs to keep up with the bills. There are probably people in your classes right now who are homeless.
I know, I know. You aren’t talking about THOSE homeless people. But you are. You’re negatively stigmatizing a significant and rapidly growing problem in the United States, and you’re perpetuating harmful stigmas against mental illness in the process.
And yeah, you want to solve the problem of homeless people on campus. But you want to do that by driving them out of Irvine. That’s not a solution. Instead, you should support important social services that assist homeless people living with mental illnesses in finding vital medical treatment and humane living conditions.
At the end of the day, I hope your article is badly written satire, but I’m confident that’s not the case.
“Spencer Grimes is a fourth-year English major. He can be reached at sgrimes@uci.edu.”
You’re a soon-to-graduate English major, eh? Good luck with that; have fun in the real world next year. Assuming you ever leave the safe confines of some gated community, anyway…
The fear of having people who are homeless around is not admitting that it may happen to us. Homelessness can affect anyone.
Instead of enforcing police/security/militant action, let’s create resources for people who may have been affected by a broken economic system, war, and lack of mental health facilities. The first step is always to build awareness. People who are homeless are not homeless people.
Compare the number of homeless people in Irvine and neighboring Santa Ana. Is it fair? Eventually, the presence of people who are victims of declining social resources and programming will be visible. And should be visible. So we can see exactly where our system fails its people.
I have no idea if you’re a professional troll or not.
Two homeless people. Two. And quite possibly, you may be wrong in your assessment.
If the thought of someone suffering without a home really distracts you from studying, I suggest you go out there and help the problem rather than encourage ‘sweeping away’ homeless people under the rug, so to say.
We have many problems in our society. Homelessness and poverty being among them. Irvine is unique in a sense because those two facets are salient in the town over, Santa Ana. Yet in Irvine, are nowhere to be found. How about the hard working people of Santa Ana?
I want to know, how many homeless people do they run into on a daily basis? I’m certain its more than 2 in a month. I bet they deal If they’re like you, how many days are cramped and inconvenienced?
Thankfully most people aren’t like you. They aren’t sheltered, self-centered or naive. Most people have a quiet tolerance but also an acknowledgement of their situation, not an open disdain like you have displayed.
I’m SO SORRY you’ve been inconvenienced by homeless people. Maybe travel to San Francisco, Skid Row in LA, any third world nation. You would absolutely have the worst day of your life! You may see… three or more homeless people in day! How horrible for you!
Of all of the important topics and issues in the world that could have been written about, the only pressing issue that concerns you is the two alleged homeless people you saw on campus?? This editorial is simply discrimination against a group of people that you deem somehow “unfit” to enjoy our PUBLIC campus. This is truly a disgusting mark on the university newspaper and it seems like there needs to be a revision in the reviewing process of what is published.
Well said, Nuha. This is completely ignorant to think that all homeless people are “mentally unstable”. For example, as of 2009, over 40% of homeless males are veterans. Now I’m not saying these specific people were veterans, but you should think twice before creating broad generalizations.
Perhaps volunteering at a homeless shelter would help you better understand these “creeps”.
Umm, for one the writer is completely ignorant of the world. For two, please new u get some writers that can actually form thoughts into words. Seriously I never read the new u anymore bc the writing is absolutely terrible.
People like YOU should be the ones getting kicked off campus.
Meh, I’m from los angeles, i don’t see this as even a small issue
This is a joke, right? Right?
The article is satirical. But I can see how that is beyond the UCI audience.
Maybe because it’s not funny…? Regardless of whether or not you can have a sense of humor about homelessness, the writing isn’t funny.
These people obviously have problems. Instead of showing them compassion you ridicule them. The New U is better than this and should not stand this kind of ignorant and intolerant writing.
You should really be ashamed of this.
The piece’s main argument, that campus security should keep the homeless away, is not sufficiently supported at all, and relies on classist prejudice and misconception.
First, the worry about the grave threat to student safety posed by the deluge of two whole homeless people has no factual basis whatsoever. A 1988 Study by Dr. Pamela Fischer of Johns Hopkins showed that, although the homeless are indeed arrested at higher rates than the general population, “arrests of the homeless were more likely to be for relatively trivial, victimless crimes, such as offenses against the public order.” Further study has shown that the homeless “were actually less likely to commit [violent] crimes against person or property” than the general population.
Second, you offer your personal emotional reaction, which is the most revealing. You were “imagining the look on my friend’s face when I told him” that there was a homeless person intruding on what otherwise would be a sanitized upper middle class paradise. He even smelled bad. The horror! In the first sentence, you say the homeless are “plaguing” the campus and fill you with a “sense of dread.” Really? How melodramatic. The idea that “we should be rid of the mentally unstable homeless” really tempts me to fulfill Godwin’s law here, although I’ll restrain myself. Are your upper class sensibilities so delicate that “such people” really ought to be categorically (and illegally) forced off the school grounds? Or even better, perhaps we should gather them all together and put them in camps somewhere far away where they won’t bother us normal folk.
Sources: http://bit.ly/uWaC3Y ; http://bit.ly/vUfbyx ; http://bit.ly/tolASz
Good lord how insensitive can you be. What a jerk. Fun fact: do you think all the other big shot universities that turned you down are void of homeless people? Think Harvard is in the “best” place? How about USC or Berkeley, to go local?
College, specifically attendance at a state institution allows you to see the population of the state. This is what we are. And you can’t keep shutting these people out and dumping homeless people in Santa Ana. This sort of paranoid, arrogant attitude is not conducive to anyone.
Just because people have a “right” to be there doesn’t mean that they should. Westboro Baptist has the right to protest soldier funerals but that doesn’t mean social values deem their presence to be appropriate.
I pay $12k in tuition, hundreds in fees, $6k in housing, county, state, and federal taxes to ensure a good education in safe, wholesome Irvine, not ghetto project USC or homeless-filled Berkeley. I do think that the university should take steps in ensuring that I am a student safe from potentially dangerous people from roaming around campus.
Just because there isn’t evidence now doesn’t mean that it won’t ever happen in the future. Just because there haven’t been any “attacks” doesn’t mean that students aren’t extremely uncomfortable or feel like they are in danger.
If you “think that the university should take steps in ensuring that I am a student safe from potentially dangerous people from roaming around campus,” why aren’t you up in arms about your classmates who roam campus in their gang colors, I mean fraternity gear, who engage in sexual assault and date rape?
Students face more danger from other students than from homeless folks. Well played, Jo.
Gotta agree with the author of the article. There’s a homeless woman who hangs out in gateway a lot, and she’s distracting to the students who are trying to study. Also, the old asian woman in the wheelchair in UTC is there every damn day. She needs to find something better to do than to annoy a bunch of kids.
Comments like this make me wish I believed in karma. You actually deserve to lose the ability to walk. If it were just your comment board stupidity it would be one thing, but to think that you often walk by the same two extremely unfortunate people–one of whom is in a wheelchair–and THIS is what you think when you see them? That’s not just stupid, it’s cruel. You’re a rotten, festering sore on the face of the planet.
You should move to Pyonyang. Not a single crazy or old person there.
Really, this is has got to be a joke.
This is in bad taste and makes an incredible amount of assumptions of people based independently on one or two accounts of a person. Could you be more judgmental? The sighting of two “apparent homeless” people does not require an opinion essay on why homeless people are bad for UCI.
I think that calling our homeless “creeps” and “weird” makes you look completely ignorant. I am just SO sorry about you experiencing TWO homeless people here in Irvine. It’s a good thing you’re in Irvine, I wonder how you would have felt outside the bubble where a diversity of social class exists.
I don’t understand the point of this article- this is a public university, and just like we have protesters from the community plague our school, the homeless technically have the right to roam public areas. You know, they are people too. What a concept. And your proposal to rid of “mentally unstable homeless” really perpetuates the mistreatment of these human beings.
Lastly, to have such an insane amount of fear of these people is unwarranted. Show me some evidence in which a student here at UCI was attacked by a homeless person on ring road or Aldrich Park.
Just because these people aren’t like you, it doesn’t give you authority to demand you kick them off and spread a mentality of hatred through media.
Thanks, Nuha, for taking the words out of my mouth. I realize this is an opinion, but I really hope no one else is subjected to this ignorance. You have no idea what the life of a homeless person is like and kicking them out of your precious campus is not going to solve anything. Homeless people are PEOPLE too. And they are some of the most vulnerable humans in our society. Even more vulnerable than a well-fed, warm, dry college student. Show some respect. If you don’t want to see homeless people, do something constructive and compassionate to help them.
You go guy or girl!!!
Please be satire, please be satire…
what exactly is your point of the article except making yourself and UCI to seem intolerant and ignorant?