Before he started at the University of Arizona, Kendrick Begay lived in a hogan: the traditional home of the Navajo.
“When I came here it was a big culture shock to live in a city for the first time, compared to living on the rez,” he says, sporting a UA polo and silver and turquoise Apple Watch band.
In the Navajo Nation, he and his family would haul wood in the winters to keep warm, and haul water for livestock in the summers. Begay says he didn’t have access to the internet until COVID left his family with no other choice.
“We always say the younger of our siblings have it better because there's always running water, there's always electricity,” he says through a smile. “And now we have internet.”
Begay is now a junior studying civil engineering. But freshman year, he says, was rough. There was a lot to get used to.
That’s when a UA program came in: O’odham Ki, or the People’s Home. It was one of a dozen on-campus LLCs — Living Learning Communities — that housed students from similar backgrounds or disciplines on the same dorm floor.
“There's people you can look out for, people who look out for you; people who can relate to you,” Begay says, of meeting other Navajo students.
But starting next school year, the housing groups will be rebranded as Discovery Communities, and students will no longer be placed based on their cultural identities.
Mitch Zak, a UA spokesperson, told AZPM that internal data indicates the LLC model, which included housing by culture, did not enhance graduation rates and retention.
“That’s the priority,” he says.
AZPM has submitted a public records request to the university for the internal data that suggests such. As of Feb. 18, AZPM has not received that data.
“While organized around interdisciplinary themes, the new framework will provide meaningful and authentic opportunities to integrate cultural perspectives within the residential experience,” Zak wrote in an email.
Ryan Thomas is a sophomore studying law and during her freshman year, she lived in Marsha’s place, the LLC intended for LGBTQ+ students. She’s not convinced of the university’s reasoning for shutting down the LLCs.
“I think that that's a ridiculous claim, because Marsha's Place was only a few years old. When I was in it last year, that was its second year of operation. There's not enough data to make that claim,” she says.
Thomas, a trans woman, says Marsha’s Place was one of her main motivations to attend the UA, for safety purposes especially.
“The bare minimum expectations I had going into Marsha’s Place was: I'm not going to have to worry about a hostile roommate because everyone's queer and trans, everyone gets it,” she says. “And we had that. But more than that, we had this community.”
After experiencing the dismantling of several Diversity, Equity and Inclusion-related campus policies, Thomas sees this as yet another reason to mistrust the administration.
Last year, the cultural resources centers were restructured as “student spaces,” and most groups were forced to change their name. That included the LGBTQ+ student group which was made the “Pride Student Space” despite a vote to call it “Queer and Trans Student Space.”
During an undergraduate listening session with administration last semester, Thomas says Vice Provost Jenna Hatcher warned students that it would be risky to include language like “trans” in the name, due to the Trump Administration’s orders to cut DEI initiatives.
“While the university might try to make it seem like this is a democratic process, we did not want this. We, the students, did not want this,” Thomas says.
She says students without the support system that Marsha’s Place provided will now be at greater risk. Thomas says she’s been called slurs many times on campus and was met with derogatory comments from potential roommate matches on the UA’s housing portal site.
Begay says there will be a lot of missed opportunities without programs like O’odham Ki.
“It’s hard to find people who grew up similar to you and, without the LLCs, it looks like many incoming freshmen are just going to start picking dorms scattered all over the place,” he says.
All the students AZPM spoke with say they learned about the LLC cancellation through word of mouth — or by checking the website online, and seeing it had been wiped.
The new Discovery Communities will be targeted for students interested in leadership, sustainability, global citizenship and second-year engagement.
Students still have the option to apply for gender-inclusive housing and “open housing” where gender is not taken into account for dorm placement.
