Why Humboldt?

In the wake of recent administrative decisions, students have been reflecting on why Cal Poly Humboldt won as their university of choice. Are these reasons enough for students to stay enrolled amidst the housing crisis? Here are some insights from students that shed light on why Humboldt appealed to them. As of reporting, two of the seven students included in this article will be leaving the university next semester.

Alexander deBarros

“I’ve always been interested in science and nature. I’ve known for well over a decade that I wanted to study birds when I grew up ... When I decided to transfer to a four year institution, I saw that Humboldt had a specific wildlife major, which was exactly what I wanted to do ... It was also nice to move up here because I’m from LA, Southern California, so I get the out of state experience with in-state tuition … I do enjoy spending time out in nature, exploring the forest, the marsh, and just talking with all of the other people around here, especially people who are also wildlife majors. Just about everybody I’ve met has been really nice and easy to talk to.”

Kameron Kendall

“I have a sick twisted fantasy of being a wild mountain man. Honestly I didn’t expect to be in the dorms. I wanted to live on the side of Riverbank and catch fish with my bare hands and a spear. I came here for total and complete isolation. I wanted to be away from the world. I wanted to be devoid of responsibility.”

Rana Ceja

“First of all, I came here casue my cousin lives here, and second of all cause when I did come here I saw the damn forest and I was like ‘Dude, this is hella beautiful. I wanna be here forever.’ I wanna be connected to nature and it was a double whammy because I got far away from my fam. I became independent. I became my own person here. I’m growing, I’m nurturing, I’m going through the pain of it all, but alone.”

“What brought me to the Humboldt area is I have family near here … up in the Yurok tribe/nation, and I also have I know professors who work here who are family …It’s definitely a lot different than what I expected it to be. Something that I really like about this campus is the ITEPP building and the community here, as well as SQE [Students for Quality Education] I’m also part of Promotorx, which is run by Mariso l… As an indigenous student, another reason I came to this campus was because there’s a large native population here, but honestly there’s things that the school could be doing so much better … what’s happening with housing is not okay

I’m also deciding not to come back just cause this school is extremely isolating, and on top of that I would have instances where I just like felt like I wasn’t really understood in my classroom … I just don’t think a lot of like white faculty or white teachers try to like make their curriculum comfortable for POC students. I remember one of the assignments was like ‘Talk about a time where you’ve dealt with an issue and like how you approached it’ and a lot of issues that I deal with have to do with my cultural or racial identity or queer identity so I was writing about those instances which … just bring up a lot of trauma and there’s not really any resources for me. There weren’t any resources for me to just kind of work through that. I talked to the teacher about it and, you know, there’s only so much you can do.”

“Originally I was taking entomology in High School and my entomology teacher went here, his daughter went here, and his wife went here. So he would hype it up every time we talked about going to college, and then what made me want to come here even more was I went to the housing office during a tour where they talked about rainbow housing … I happen to be queer so I applied and got accepted into rainbow housing and into the school … There’s lots of queer people, which is my main reason for staying and loving it here, … and lots of really great outfits I see all the time and it’s so fun when someone compliments you on your outfit. There’s just tons of queer activities to do ran by different organizations on campus, and so it’s a super nice, inviting community.”

“I lived in a big city and I just wanted something different and it was far away from home. Now that I’m here, for sure I’m grateful that I live on campus because I feel as though being a brown kid, it would be pretty weird living in town with all of these white individuals, simply due to the fact that like when I do go out, there are times where it’s a little weird, so imagining that on like a daily … it’s awkward.”

“Initially, I was looking to transfer to a school really late so Humboldt was the only school that would accept transfer students to be honest, but what kept me here were the people and ... the location itself ... it was so far away from any place I’ve ever been. The culture is really different than anything I’ve been exposed to, but I think that’s a really good thing ... I don’t wanna put it in political terms but I’m from more of a conservative part of California and even at my old college campus, there wasn’t a lot of pride in the fact that people are different and that they have the right to choose what they how they want to live their life. I think here, people are very open about who they are and I’ve never seen that from where I’m from and where I’ve been.”