Dean Huang's Answers to My Questions

Dean Jeff Huang was gracious enough to reply to my request for follow up after his Forum statement. Here is what he had to say.

1. What are the "environmental and community reasons"? Wouldn't parking at the other colleges -- who have already built their structures -- be preferable to just keeping cars at home?

“Environmental” simply means less automobile use. Walking and bikes are alternatives. “Community” means that if the freshmen are on-campus more, they might engage in the CMC community more in their first year.

It’s my understanding that the Claremont Colleges are not interested in opening up their parking spaces to students from CMC at this time.

No decisions have been made about how long the ban on freshman cars will last. The master planning process is going to take up the parking issue.

2. What is the projected cost of financing a bicycle shop in the basement of Wolhford? Who will staff it? What will its hours be? And how will that be financed?

We have been working with Cycle Werks in San Clemente. They have been giving us advice on what a small, college bike shop will need. We’re still putting together the list of items. We think we can get the whole thing together with relatively little money, which we’ll pay for from the Student Activities budget. The staff will be the former Student Escort Service; there is no additional labor cost. We’ll put them through a training period on how to become a bike technician, and then they will help set up the bikes, build the shop, and run it. No word on hours yet; we’ll have a grand opening when they’re ready to go

3. An ATM at Honnold-Mudd? What branch will it be? Will the campus conduct market research before deciding what branch that will be?

The Claremont University Consortium has been working on this. They have relationships with various banks, and they have taken the lead on this project for all the Claremont Colleges. I don’t think CUC has announced which bank yet. They also run the Honnold-Mudd Library, so they need to work on how this will fit with the rest of their facility.

Ben Casnocha's Review on Tyler Cowen's New Book

My friend and once (and maybe future) classmate, Ben Casnocha, has a review and essay in my favorite magazine, The American, about a book by my favorite blogger, Tyler Cowen. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and dining with Professor Cowen at a Kauffman Foundation-sponsored economic bloggers conference. I facebook messaged Professor Cowen asking him for a copy of his book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World and thus far, I have found it an engaging read. I found Ben's review, though, to be a bit too focused on well, Ben Casnocha, and not enough on the book or the serious ideas embedded with it. He focuses on the roll of blogs in helping people to learn, but doesn't seriously probe the trade-offs, dismissing them as some kind of cranky "myth of focused people" that is skeptical of all things progress.

A stronger review would have asked what kind of society or democracy we're getting when people get information instantly, as opposed to having to struggle -- and thereby exercise their mind and strengthen their neural connections -- to learn new things. Ben confesses that he never read the books necessary to be a good libertarian, but that he subscribed to a few blogs dealing casually with libertarian topics and suggests that that might be enough. It isn't. It's the work of sophists and it will have real consequences for our society if the people who are our punditocracy, a position Ben is trying to achieve, don't read the classics or delve into the real deep problems that afflict us. A mile wide and an inch deep, a phrase Ben often repeats, is still shallow, after all.

Some Thoughts on Dean Huang's Statement About Cars on Campus

I'm glad Abhi Nemani CMC '10 got Dean Jeff Huang to respond to an email asking for a statement on banning all freshmen from the campus. (The Facebook group, incidentally, has been continuing to grow.)

There are still serious questions for follow up and I'm concerned that the Forum seems to have dropped the ball there. Here are just a few of those questions.

Am I right in assuming that the Dean of Students office has no intention of returning parking after the construction of new facilities? Is the measure then permanent to restrict freshmen from parking on campus?

I'm unsure what is meant by "community concerns". Does the DOS office think that there are students who don't spend enough time on campus? I never noticed that. If anything, it seems that the freshmen are too social and don't spend enough time working. Are there figures that could confirm that willingness to go home often?

What are the "environmental and community reasons"? Is the college aware of a study that shows that it is actually better to ride in a gas-guzzling SUV than on a commuter rail? As first documented by The Christian Science Monitor:

Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of the University of California found that instead of taking a train into the city from suburbia, there are times when “people would be better off traveling through town in a gas-guzzling, high emission SUV,” reports Red Orbit. Ouch!

But it gets even worse: Taking the commuter train across Boston results in higher greenhouse gas emissions than traveling the same distance in a jumbo jet, says New Scientist.

I'm inclined to think it is an environmental reason. How else to justify the expenditure of a new bike shop on campus? What is the projected cost of financing a bicycle shop in the basement of Wolhford? Who will staff it? What will its hours be? And how will that be financed? Will student fees go up? How is that cheaper than upping the fee for registration and then subsidizing the remainders?

An ATM at Honnold-Mudd? What branch will it be? Will the DOS conduct market research before deciding what branch that will be? Any answers to any of those questions would be greatly appreciated.

My bet is that the Dean of Students Office believes it won’t receive that many requests to park on campus. But what if, instead, they are inundated? There are 288 freshmen students who will be coming to campus next semester. If even 20% of the students want to have cars on campus, that’s nearly 60 additional spots that are needed. How will they decide who gets a spot and who doesn’t?

Just in any socialized system, you’ll end up having those who are connected get the spots while those who are not will be left out. There will be gaming and lying and forgery to get what people would have been willing to pay for honestly to get.

In The Forum comments, there some (anonymous, of course) attacks on rich students who drive nice cars to campus. Hey stupid, who do you think donates the money to build the parking lots? This kind of “screw the rich” stuff is really short sighted and downright against the motto of our college. We should aspire to joining the rich, not attacking their choice of transport. We want to make them feel comfortable and to enjoy their experience here so that they continue to donate.

I remember from Professor Weidenmier’s Econ. 50 that one of the most efficient ways to allocate resources is to raise the price of something and then subsidize those who cannot afford it. Why don’t we give that a try here?

In high school, we had a similar problem. I don’t remember exactly how parking worked because I didn’t have a car (or a license), but I remember that they charged different prices for prom based upon your financial aid, so as to guarantee that most of the class went. They also subsidized poor students (like me) with vouchers from prom based upon our level of financial aid.