Dearest Reader: A Proposal: Camosun must house the homeless

Columns August 16, 2017

Dearest Reader,

Some weeks have now elapsed since mayor Lisa Helps first offered, at the suggestion of a few good Samaritans, the suggestion that residents of our fair city open their doors to the displaced and downtrodden of the much-discussed homeless community. At the time, a number of local students were quoted in this very publication speaking not uncertainly in favour of the plan. I can only imagine that in the ensuing time, they have already begun making available the shelter of their abundant disused living space to those wanting, followed by many among their fellow students.

Dearest Reader is a satire column appearing in every issue of Nexus.

If my estimation of our community’s outward-looking nature proves faulty, however, I have instead foisted upon myself the burden of providing a backup scheme, as ever, based in the exploitation of the resources of our dear Camosun College.

Should tuition and earning rates among the youth of the city continue to follow their current course, I estimate that many more classrooms will be found empty and available on our campuses in the near future. Therefore it seems only prudent to make up the lost earnings by providing this space, at the cost of textbooks alone, to those in need.

By night, the occupants of these classrooms may sleep in the rows between desks and subsist on the traditional Camosun-dweller’s diet of vending-machine vitamin water and instant ramen. By day, their attendance of sociology courses will educate them for the abatement of their societal ills.

Thus, we shall raise a generation of eager academics, prepared to rejoin society. Should the least good come of it, a lack of student debt among our new fellow scholars will unburden society of an ill far more palpable to readers here than any which can be observed on our downtown streets.