By The Runner Staff
The new Student Housing East complex is impressive. The newer, cleaner and more modern buildings present an improvement over the old dormitories toward the west side of campus in many ways.
However, they lack in the name department. Names such as Juniper and Pinyon reflect very little about CSUB, Bakersfield or the county they reside in. While the plants the dorms are named after are local, Bakersfield conjures images of oil, agriculture, civil rights and music in the minds of many.
In 2013, CSUB honored legendary country singer Merle Haggard with a doctorate degree. The Bakersfield area is home to many fantastic musical acts that could be honored through naming a section of Student Housing East after them.
Merle Haggard Hall, The Buck Owens Corridor, Korn Row or many other names drawn from the local sound would have been welcome possibilities. Outside of music, the contributions of activists such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Phillip Vera Cruz and Benjamin Gines have left a huge mark on farmworker’s rights locally and nationwide.
With CSUB’s large number of migrant students, paying honor to those who worked to make conditions better for their parents and grandparents would be appropriate. Even the Lord of the Rings themed names would be a great way to keep a part of CSUB history in the dorms.
The names were after all decided by some of the earliest classes at CSUB. And, the series continues to be immensely popular, Box Office Mojo recently reported that the latest Hobbit film has already made a quarter-billion dollars domestically, and the names had lasted decades at CSUB.
To see the names disappear forever from the living quarters would be slightly disappointing. Mostly, the student housing should mean something to the students living there. Be they names after a famous alum, an important local historical figure or even just names by the students themselves. Students will spend years of their lives living in the dorms – it’s an important time of their life. While the juniper tree is a beautiful, and local plant perhaps the dorms can do better than a tree.
