I get off the phone with the White House’s expert liaison to the UN on matters of social enterprise, and walk into Social Enterprise class. I sit with the three classmates who chose my Student Veteran housing project to join as our year-long class assignment, after they heard me describe it on Day One. “So, what has your group been up to this week?” the professor asks us. I open my mouth —
And get scooped by the 30-year-old behind me. “Well, you know, I called Jinx on Monday, just wanted to get some clarification on her idea. Besides that, we haven’t really done much — ”
Holy shit.
It wasn’t his fault, really. Just the beer talking. He and another teammate are paying $33 per hour to sit in class buzzed and coattail my plan. One asked me, “Why didn’t my team TELL me we have readings assigned for this week?”
It’s Week Three of class.
My New College mentee, meantime, is double-majoring in Biochem and Philosophy. Having already gotten his Associate’s through high school/college dual enrollment these past two years. He’s 18.
And my ex’s kid, who we raised while we both were attending New College, is now dual-majoring also, at UCF. Electrical engineering and photonics.
Meantime, next door to New College, the meeting I had scheduled with the student life directors at the branch of this school here in my town, gets canceled. They are pursuing their own housing options.
I know you are. Your chancellor showed me the plans. Right before she told me to schedule the meeting with y’all.
And your campus had plenty of time for my plans when I was a student here last year, winning your franchise those national awards. For building a tiny house for a homeless veteran. In my own backyard.
Sigh.
But maybe it’s just a supply problem. They tell me they don’t need student-veteran housing here in Sarasota, anyways. Because the vet office here just told me they don’t have any student veterans in need of housing. None. “Nope — they all have families and homes already.”
Fascinating. Since my estimation, based on SVA data and research, is tracking ~180 student veterans at this nonresidential campus. Sarasota papers are talking up how the local housing shortage is hitting students disproportionately hard. So all 180 student veterans already happily permanently housed is a fucking Christmas miracle.
And here it’s only September. Hallelujah.
But “it’s not like these school projects matter anyway,” says the classmate who ran back to the campus pub during our ten-minute break last night. “Like, last term, we did a project just like this in Marketing class. We found out the best place in St. Pete to house a dorm, right? And we worked out how to pitch it, dummied up ads for it, the whole thing.
“And my group and I, right? We figured, ‘Hey! We’re all businesspeople! We could really make this work!’ So we went back to the stakeholders we’d approached for research. Y’know, the hospitals, the restaurants next to our site. We asked for permission to go ahead and build the dorm we’d just planned. They all turned us down.
“But guess where the school’s new dorm building is going now?” He laughed, like he’d told a joke. “Isn’t that hilarious?”
* * * * *
Meanwhile, back at the state’s Honors college, where they don’t steal research, my mentee is tentatively greenlit for a “biochem of neurolinguistics” tutorial he wants to design with the blue-haired philosophy guy and the chem instructor with the purple hair and facial piercings. All three of them are excited.
Just like the director of the Master of Liberal Arts program is excited that I’ll be presenting at the Modern Language Association conference in January. On material I researched during the course I just designed and executed…with the same Ringling School professor who mentored my comic book thesis at New College ten years ago.
And just like my business professor is excited by this student veteran housing idea. And doing her damnedest to help me launch it. Despite the pub on campus.
It is a blessing to me that there are always rogue agents in any institution, willing to personally go above and beyond to help an innovative student. These programs themselves, though, aren’t set up to promote innovation. Beyondwhich, executing students’ marketing ideas as your own is just plain meanspirited, if true.
Trying to wade through anyways is what’s gotten me exhausted today.
https://www.facebook.com/CollateralBeauty/videos/1326162190727950/