By Jon Roe
The high costs of a university education–combining tuition with living, eating and shelter–have been blamed for keeping some people away from higher education and away from campuses. But for others, it’s actually brought them closer to the campus than most students will ever be.
Meet Ron Frank. Frank, who is using a pseudonym, has been living on campus for at least one semester per year of the last three years. Winter 2005. Winter 2006. Fall 2007. Frank has lived out of his backpack (for the first year) or out of three lockers (for the last two years) while going home on weekends to his parent’s house in Drumheller.
“Before I went to India on exchange [in the fall 2004 semester], I was kind of joking to my friends that I’d live on their couch when I got back,” said Frank. “While I was actually in India it was seeing people living that life [that inspired me to live on campus]. For instance, there was a holy man, he had hair that was so long, he was able to take it and put it into a bag and he would use that for a pillow. It was quite obvious that they were living this very unattached life.”
The idea first came to Frank after talking to a friend who had heard of some McGill students tenting in the bushes on the Montreal university’s campus. When Frank came back from India, he had no housing arrangements, so he decided he would experiment and see if living at and around the university could be done.
“When I got back here I had nowhere else to go, so it was somewhat born out of necessity but it was a personal challenge as well,” said Frank.
The first semester almost killed him. He was saved in February, like many students in the winter semester, by reading week.
“Reading week was a saviour that year,” said Frank. “I didn’t really know how to do it at the beginning, I had to learn as I went. It was very tough, the first half of the first semester.”
Thankfully for Frank, he had a twin brother living in the city, providing him a place to stay occasionally–until his brother’s girlfriend chased him off. The first year, he spent the least amount of time on campus and more circulating through his brother’s and friends’ houses.
One of the challenges Frank overcame in his first semester was loneliness.
“You’re surrounded by people all day but they’re at arms length,” said Frank. “People are so distant at this university too.”
Eating also presented a problem. In the beginning, he had no lockers and lived out of a giant backpack, which he carted around with him. With no locker to store food, he relied heavily on MacEwan Hall eating establishments, which put a dent into his wallet and took a toll on his health.
But the biggest challenge Frank faced while living on campus was sleeping. Namely, finding somewhere, anywhere, he could crash.
“There was simply nowhere you could control who saw you at what times,” said Frank. “You didn’t have a door to close and say, ‘I’m just going to unbutton my belt here for an hour and relax.’ The biggest problem was finding a place to sleep at the beginning.”
Frank took the lessons learned from the first semester and came back in the second better prepared and equipped. After acquiring a travel pillow and a bike, Frank could spend more of the second semester reflecting on the lessons he learned from living a minimalist, campus-based lifestyle.
“The second year was me being able to step back and reflect upon it and really learn what lessons I was gaining from this experience,” said Frank. “The biggest thing was how important friends are and those people who are willing to put you up.”
Frank emphasized how important it was to have his parents’ house in Drumheller on weekends and friends to put him up at least one night of the week was. On any typical on-campus day, Frank rarely gets six hours of uninterrupted sleep. He sleeps from 5:15 to 11 a.m., when it becomes too loud to sleep, on couches on the third floor of MSC.
Despite spending many late nights of the week sleeping across the campus in various places, Frank has been careful and has had few run-ins with campus security.
Part of his success at flying under the radar is due to the relationship he maintains with the late-night custodial staff. He makes sure to say “hi” and knows them by name. The janitors are usually the ones who call campus five-o if they see something suspicious and Frank noted that he wouldn’t have been able to survive this long without their acceptance.
While Frank’s first year as a campus transient was mostly a challenge and partly a necessity, this last year was more necessity. With rent in Calgary skyrocketing, Frank said he couldn’t afford to pay the downpayment to rent a place and couldn’t afford rent in general.
Frank also took out a bank loan in his first two years to finance his cost of living expenses and was having troubles making the interest payments.
“Another reason I was doing it was because it was almost getting to the point where I needed to take a year off to pay down some debts,” said Frank. “This is me keeping my head above water. I’ve been knee-deep with [my bank]. Just to make my payments to them–my interest payments–it bankrupts me.”
Frank, who is in the fifth year of his seven-year double-major english/honours philosophy degree, won’t likely be living on campus past this semester–unless he gets a job as a community advisor in residence, which he expressed interest in–and has found that living on campus gives him an edge over other students.
“My homework is fun for me and my life and my schoolwork have become one,” said Frank. “There’s nothing cooler than sitting in the Science Theatres, maybe smoking a little bowl and reading some hardcore philosophy at 2 a.m. It really gives you a rush. The next day when you’re in class, engaging in discussion, you were sitting around at 3 a.m. thinking these crazy thoughts [and] that crazyness leads off into the class.”
Next year, Frank plans to advance his housing situation to the next level.
“For the next two years, I think I’m going to move up in the world and be a guy on a couch,” said Frank. “That’s all I need–if you can give me a safe place to sleep from this time to this time, every day.”