North Texas Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 117, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 3, 2019 Page: 3 of 12
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Page 3
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019
NTDAILY.COM
Illustration by Austin Banzon
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An upcoming SGA service may help students
navigate the world of student housing through
advice and reviews from previous renters.
SGA Strategic Planning Director Brightyn
Patterson said the organization wants to send
out housing surveys around November for
renters to document their experience with
apartments around Denton, later publishing the
results of the survey online for public viewing.
“It’s kind of a rating system for different
apartments in the Denton area,” Patterson said.
“It’s making sure they’re held accountable by
UNT students.”
SGA members have not yet finalized all
details of the housing survey initiative, which
Patterson says may be complete by the spring
semester. For now, the plan encompasses off-
campus apartments, though it is unclear if
By Michelle Nguyen
@michellejnguyen
By Carter Mize
@MizeCarter
To Ramirez, the fact that UNT
is close to becoming an HSI will
make transitions smoother for many
students.
“It just proves how much nearer
UNT is getting to serving a community,
especially a community that a lot of us
feel like a minority,” Ramirez said. “It’s
important to have that safe space and
the sense of a home away from home.”
A university qualifying an HSI does
not guarantee funding will be provided,
but the title is still important in terms
of accurately reflecting the region’s
demographics on campus, Torres said.
“Ideally that gives other students
opportunities who are a part of that
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Students walk outside of Rawlins Hall on UNT campus. The Student Government Association is creating a housing
survey where students can rate and discuss housing options on and off campus. Isabel Anes
campus dormitories will appear in reviews.
“I really would love [a survey] for everyone
that’s housed in Denton, whether it be on-
campus or off-campus,” Patterson said. “There’s
different dorms that also have their own little
things that are wrong with them, so we want to
make sure that students know, that incoming
freshmen know.”
The rating system would most likely operate
on a five-point scale and rate different aspects
of an apartment, like the presence of mold or
quality of furniture, to reach an average rating,
Patterson said, though SGA members are still
working on a finalized system.
SGA intends to base its service on an existing
resource called “Break Up With Your Landlord,”
provided by the Minnesota Student Association,
a student advocacy group at the University of
Minnesota - Twin Cities. Patterson says SGA
gained approval from MSA to develop a similar
program for UNT using their current system.
was killed in a car accident.
Following the accident, Dawson said staff
at her apartment mishandled the victim’s
belongings by not assisting Dawson and other
roommates with transitioning the apartment
for a new tenant.
“I realize the [apartment] probably doesn’t
have a lot of experience with tenants dying, but
I feel like a lot of this would have been handled
better if they’d had the actual managers dealing
with things,” Dawson said. “The student
workers generally don’t communicate with each
other, so you can go in two days in a row and get
two different answers.”
Dawson said apartment staff often
miscommunicated details about the transition
process, leaving her and other roommates to
send the victim’s personal mail back to family
members and keep up with her former pet,
which eventually came home with Dawson.
“They didn’t really have any answers for
us about how we should be involved in letting
her family into the apartment, helping them
move things out, and were really vague about
how fast the turnaround would be in getting
someone else into that room,” Dawson said.
Things would have gone differently, Dawson
said, if she had access to more information
about student living arrangements.
“I would have chosen to live in non-student
living instead,” Dawson said. “I’ve only been
in my current non-student living apartment
for a few months but it’s been such a better
experience...! feel like with non-student living,
complexes are less likely to try to screw tenants
over because they know actual adults are less
likely to take it than students, who probably
are in their first apartment and have less of an
idea of their rights are.”
Student Government Association developing resource for student renters
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UNT is on the cusp of becoming
a Hispanic-Serving Institution as
the hispanic student population has
risen to approximately 24.9 percent,
Multicultural Center Director Damian
Torres said.
A Hispanic-Serving Institution
(HSI) is defined as a university with
hispanic enrollment making up 25
percent of total enrollment. UNT needs
roughly 33 more people in order to
qualify, according to Susan Ramirez,
the president of UNT’s Latinx/
Hispanic Student Union (LHSU).
“This only proves how much the
Union has been needed, just because
sadly within our community we are
barely finding out about different
organizations and different resources,”
Ramirez said. “It’s long overdue at this
point.”
As of 2017-2018, there are 523
institutions met the definition of an
HSI in the United States, with Texas
being the state with the highest number
of HSIs at 92. HSIs in the North Texas
area include Texas Women’s University,
UNT Dallas and the University of Texas
at Arlington.
Once UNT becomes an HSI, the
university is eligible to apply for
funding through Title V under the
Higher Education Act of 1965, which
was created in order to expand
educational opportunities for hispanic
students. The grants, which have
ranged up to $700,000, may be used
for investing in expenditures such
as lab equipment, students support
community and who aren’t a part of
that community an opportunity to
learn from one another and to ideally
get a better understanding of what it
looks like to exist in that space,” Torres
said.
Despite the growing hispanic
student population, Torres said UNT’s
diverse student demographics are not
as accurately reflected in the faculty
and staff.
“I’m in a space where we work very
consistently with faculty groups on
campus to better attract and retain
faculty of color,” Torres said. “As we
continue to grow and expand those
efforts I believe we will continue to
UNT on the cusp of becoming a Hispanic-Serving Institution
services and faculty development.
The only budget that is currently
considered at the multicultural center
is for the Black Student Union.
“Nowthat the LHSU is coming along,
it is an additional budget that isn’t
completely taken into consideration,”
Ramirez said. “I’m hoping this will
help a little bit with programming,
maybe even having bigger events that
hopefully make that exposure a little
more evident.”
Vice president and integrative
studies junior Melodie Hernandez
echoed a similar sentiment.
“I feel like a lot of the hispanic
organizations could be funded
better than they are now, like the
Multicultural Center,” Hernandez said.
“That’s a big part of the campus and a
lot of people don’t know what that is.”
Hernandez said she feels like UNT
needs more events on campus that
cater to the hispanic community.
“We do have some events, but I feel
like a lot of them are kind of white-
washed, in my opinion,” Hernandez
said. “A lot of the time it’s not as genuine
as a lot of the Hispanic community
would want it to be.”
Because of this issue, Ramirez
said she thinks there needs to be
more exposure on certain topics and
resources.
“Our goal is to make those events
more student-led,” Ramirez said.
“When students do find out about
certain talks and panels and stuff,
it’s usually around a time that’s very
inconvenient or there wasn’t enough
publicity, and a lot of students are not
aware [of them].”
Break Up With Your Landlord features
information on common housing
misconceptions and a list of questions renters
may want to ask themselves before leasing a
new apartment.
SGA would adjust some aspects of the MSA
program partly by tailoring some of the survey
questions to existing or past problems with
some Denton apartments, Patterson said.
Criminal justice junior Brittany Heckel said
the SGA housing survey would have helped
her when attempting to quickly find a suitable
apartment within walking distance from UNT.
“I knew nothing about the apartments before
moving in,” Heckel said. “I was planning on
staying in the dorms for the Fall 2017 semester
but was told by UNT housing there wouldn’t be
enough space for me. It left me pretty frantic to
find somewhere to stay only a few weeks before
the semester started.”
Heckel found an apartment close to UNT, but
wishes she had access to more student reviews
before choosing her current apartment after
dealing with recurring issues.
“The apartment itself is nice, and I liked the
fact that they had it furnished,” Heckel said.
“The only thing I’m constantly disappointed
in is the way maintenance responds to issues.
They’ll take days to come and fix repairs. There
have also been several times since I’ve been
living there that the elevators have been out for
days without being fixed.”
Philosophy master’s student Caralyn
Dawson echoed some of Heckel’s complaints
about maintenance delays when describing
her own experience with off-campus student
housing.
Dawson said she experienced hardships with
her former Denton student apartment, most
notably last year when one of her roommates
see some of those shifts at a full time
employee level as well.”
UNT President Neal Smatresk
discussed improving cultural
competence on campus in order to
better support first generation and
minority students during the 2019
State of the University address, which
Torres attended.
“The only thing to do now is to
just continue to tell our story and to
continue to highlight and showcase
as authentically and accurately the
experiences that our faculty have and
our staff and administrators have that
our students have,” Torres said.
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Najera, Rebecca. North Texas Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 117, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 3, 2019, newspaper, October 3, 2019; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1281513/m1/3/?q=music: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.