Brad arrived as a transfer student in Spring 2023, having decided that he could afford to complete his four-year degree at Cal Poly Humboldt -- with one caveat. To afford college, Brad had decided to live in a van that he'd purchased as transportation and as his home away from home. Brad began reporting for the student newspaper during his first semester here, doing university police department ride-alongs and writing about his experimental lifestyle -- living with about a dozen or more other students in the parking lots at Cal Poly Humboldt. Brad discovered community in this small group of students. In Fall 2023, his second semester in Humboldt, he and others from the campus vehicle-dwelling cohort filed to become an Associated Students' club. The Alternative Living Collective received club status about the same time that the university administrators decided to enforce parking regulations that would oust the vehicle-dwellers from the campus lots. Brad and members of the Collective met with university leaders for weeks. They circulated a petition signed by more than 3,000 students, faculty and staff