I have always considered theft the most circumstantial of the major sins.
I remember a spring break in high school that I spent at Walt Disney World. I was 17 and had reached the age where I would’ve much rather been slurring out drink orders in some third-world country, where kids go shot-for-shot with topless women and half-naked teenagers indiscriminately grind themselves on the closest living thing.
Instead, I found myself with my friend’s parents, eating an early dinner at Planet Hollywood so we could catch the 7:35 p.m. showing of “Aladdin, on Ice!” I attribute the ensuing, almost palpable, bitterness to why my friend and I decided to have a shoplifting contest for the remaining four days.
It’s not like we were stealing from Ma and Pa Kettle. This was Disney, a multinational leviathan. There was no talk about raging against machines or bringing down Corporate America from the inside. Our thievery simply became what we saw as a victimless expression of our disapproval.
It is only in hindsight that I align this experience with my attempts to attain California residency while at UCLA. I grew up in Chicago, so UCLA is ““ for me ““ very expensive. When offered the chance to attain California residency, I didn’t consider for a moment about whether or not I deserved it.
At present, there are 25,432 undergraduates at UCLA. Of those, 2,225 are from outside California, forming a paltry 8.7 percent of undergraduate students.
One quarter’s student fees is about $2,300 for in-state students, compared to about $8,600 for non-residents. So out of the 2,225 out-of-state kids, roughly every single one of them would gladly sell their bodies, pets and/or freedom for a chance to achieve residency status, a classification that saves them about $75,000 over four years.
Call me selfish, but I can think of one or two things I’d like to do with $75,000. So, between my first and second year, I set about trying to establish my California residency.
Residency is defined by two major categories. The student must demonstrate financial independence and prove “the intent to make California your home as opposed to coming to this state to go to school.”
The former is more straightforward but also much less common for undergraduate students. A representative from the registrar’s office said that in most cases, undergraduate students get turned down because they’re not financially independent.
The latter requires proof not only of your presence in California and “severing your residential ties with your former state of residence,” but proof of your motives for doing so.
My financial independence is technical at best; I am financially independent like the queen is the ruler of England.
With this, I begrudgingly admit I had no business asking for residency. I did not then, nor do I now, have any intention of staying in California. But how do you measure intentions anyway? Anything could happen between now and then, I reasoned, and in the meantime, an extra $6,300 a quarter would help me be prepared for the great unknown.
All four of my attempts to get residency were total failures, all dismissed on some minute yet glaring error. And while this was disappointing, it doesn’t bother me that much because, truthfully, I know I do not fit the criteria.
What’s curious is that the moral implications of this never entered my mind. If I see an old lady drop $100, I’ll pick it up and give it to her. But UCLA is a $3.6 billion-a-year enterprise, and I’m not losing any sleep over taking my personal grains of sand out of that particular beach.
There is a certain kind of theft that seems so victimless it’s hard to see it otherwise. It’s stealing to be sure, but it feels amoral, like downloading music on an astronomical scale.
Ultimately I failed, and I think I’m probably better off. Between pirating songs and buying alcohol for minors, I’m trying to keep my karma as clean as possible.
Not a police officer? Find O’Bryan at jobryan@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.