Trailer Residents Protest UCI’s Eviction Tactics

Every Thursday, a handful of UC Irvine students troop through campus, waving signs and chanting slogans in hopes of persuading the administration to reverse its decision to demolish their homes: a trailer park that is to be turned into a parking lot this summer.

To dramatize their cause last month, nine students blocked a crew from drilling holes for soil testing. They had expected to be arrested, and they were.

But UCI officials have angered many protesters by sending letters threatening to discipline not just those who blocked the work crew, but also nine other demonstrators who weren’t arrested. Students call it an act of intimidation.

“They’re trying to discourage people from doing this in the future,” said Jeff Ridenour, a doctoral student in computer science who has lived in the trailer park for two years with his wife and dog. He said he moved out of the way before police made the arrests, but received a disciplinary letter anyway.

William Zeller, the university’s assistant vice chancellor for student housing, said university rules allow lawful protests, and denied that officials were trying to intimidate students. He described the disciplinary letters as part of an effort to gather information. “I want everyone to trust the system,” Zeller said.

The spat between students and administrators may be the last chapter in a long-running controversy over the fate of the trailer park, which is home to about 100 students and their families.

Irvine Meadows West Trailer Park is a splash of individuality among the assembly-line look of student housing and the apartments around campus. The park got its start around 30 years ago, when Irvine was in the boondocks and the university was less than a decade old. Many dwellings are barely recognizable as trailers, having had rooms and porches built around them, lofts added, interiors redone and exteriors outrageously painted.

There is a sense of community at the trailer park, home to mostly graduate students, some for many years. They say Irvine Meadows helps make up for Irvine’s dearth of student life, part of what makes college towns such as Cambridge, Ann Arbor and Berkeley so attractive.

Irvine Meadows is also the best deal around for student housing. In one of the nation’s priciest housing markets, the 74 trailers traditionally have been sold from student to student for no more than $12,000. UCI rents spaces to students for $130 a month, which includes utilities.

All this is to end July 31, when the trailer park is scheduled for demolition to make room for more parking on the rapidly expanding campus.

The university will haul away trailers left behind. It has hired an agent to help students sell their homes and is trying to find campus housing for others.

But the students want more. They want to keep their little stretch of bohemia, where plants climb over trailers and dogs are nearly as common as textbooks.

So early this year, they began a campaign to turn up the heat on administrators. They moved from petitions to picket signs and weekly protests. On March 30, they escalated further to civil disobedience: With TV crews and reporters watching, nine students blocked the path of a truck carrying workers who were there to take soil samples necessary for building the parking lot this summer. An additional 20 protesters drifted in and out throughout the day.

About 3 p.m., campus police officers arrested the nine students as others looked on.

Some students who received letters of discipline said they weren’t even at the trailer park when the arrests took place. They suspect they were picked out of videos broadcast on TV news or from those taken by the campus housing office. This is a heavy-handed attempt to end their protests, violating their rights to free speech and to demonstrate, the students say.

Matthew Cardinale, a graduate student in sociology and one of the protest leaders, said students are now asking him if they have the right to protest. “I have to assure them of their constitutional rights,” he said. “It shows the effect of these allegations.”

Kate Irwin, a doctoral student in French literature, left the demonstration to work out and returned a few minutes before the arrests. She was outraged when she received the letter. “It was such a threatening letter. If I had done something, I would have been aware there could have been this possibility.”