When I was an undergrad living in my university's dorms, my friends and I always giggled and raised our eyebrows whenever we saw a certain fellow resident: She lived on the fifth floor, on the side of the hall that faced the sea, and she was fifty years old if she was a day. She kept to herself, as I guess one must, living among eighteen-year-olds who snicker at the sight of one. She wore red lipstick and capris, which stood out sharply against all the jeans and hoodies and bikini tops. We wondered what she majored in. For some reason, perhaps her not-quite-natural red hair and status as a relic from a bygone age, we called her Nancy Drew.
I still wonder about her, decades hence. Enrolling in college at that age is rare enough, but I wonder what on earth moved her not just to attend school but to live among heartless teenagers in an undergrad dorm, and what kept her there all year. Granted, the dorms were cheaper than local apartments, but the prospect of being a spectacle would seem not worth the savings. Was she stuck in the past, unable to relinquish her lost youth? Or was she brave? Writing a book? Was she studying us?
"Nancy Drew" leaped into my mind yet again today -- at this point, she'd be past eighty -- as I read this article in Canada's Globe and Mail about a man who graduated from the University of Victoria thirteen years ago but has been living in its student residence hall ever since. The man gives his depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder as the reason:
"Alkis Gerd'son says he's determined to stay put until all his legal options have been exhausted, saying he's drawing attention to the school's unfair treatment of disabled people," Brennan Clarke writes in the Globe and Mail.
"'This isn't just a tenancy dispute. It's about students with disabilities on campus and how they get treated by certain parties,' Mr. Gerd'son said in an interview outside his first-floor dormitory room yesterday. 'I'm doing this to highlight the inadequacies of UVic's disability accommodation policies.'
"Except for two year-long absences in the mid-1990s, Mr. Gerd'son, who suffers from 'severe obsessive compulsive disorder' and bouts of depression, has lived in residence at UVic continuously since 1991. However, he has not completed a credit course at the university since 1997, an academic record that has prompted repeated attempts by school officials to have him removed from his suite. A court decision made public yesterday upheld the university's right to evict Mr. Gerd'son based on a fixed-term contract that he signed in 2007. Kim Hart Wensley, the university's associate vice-president of faculty relations and academic administration, said yesterday the decision gives the school the right to evict Mr. Gerd'son. ... However, the case is also due to go before a human-rights tribunal in June. ...
"Sporting a long, scruffy beard, a weathered pair of tan-coloured jeans and a dark-blue terrycloth shirt, Mr. Gerd'son explained that he has been on provincial disability benefits since 2003. His condition makes it difficult to focus on academic work and interact in social situations outside the residence, he said. While he admitted living at the residence for three years without taking courses, Mr. Gerd'son is now enrolled in a non-credit business diploma program with the UVic division of continuing studies. He's hoping to earn his diploma and move into communications planning work in the aviation sector, he said. The university claims that to remain eligible to live in residence, he must be enrolled in 'credit' classes, an assertion that Mr. Gerd'son disputes.
"'They're basically trying to disenfranchise me of my student status,' he said. ...
"Ms. Hart Wensley said low-cost housing for UVic students is scarce and suggested that Mr. Gerd'son's room should be occupied by a legitimate student enrolled in a degree program.
"'We have offered him to help him transition to new accommodations, but those offers have been resisted,' she said. ...
"Mr. Gerd'son completed a bachelor of arts degree in 1993 and a bachelor of education degree in 1997."
We've all been there to some extent: knowing that we should move on, but unwilling to make the jump, even when society says we should and our loved ones say we should and our rational minds say we should. Almost any life-change, especially a big one such as finishing school and entering the post-student world, is scary. Almost any such life-change is not only scary but hard -- an emotional, intellectual, and physical workout. No wonder we quail, but then -- in most cases -- move on. Mr. Gerd'son is taking to an extreme that few of us can even imagine. Is he more stubborn than the rest of us -- or more afraid?
