Recent high occupancy housing projects have left many community members frustrated with NAU pushing its way into our neighborhoods and threatening our city’s unique character. NAU’s growth certainly requires more housing projects with the potential to destroy historic homes and neighborhoods, further reduce affordable housing stock, block views of the Peaks, lengthen commuting times, and decrease available parking. With confusion over who blame, many community members resort to blaming students.

As students, some of the comments we hear suggest that we, at best, are temporary Flagstaff’s livability through booze, trash, and traffic. We want to address some of these myths and provide students’ perspectives on some of these issues.  

Community Service: Over the past few years, F3 has been fortunate to have many NAU student interns assist in our mission work: making Flagstaff a more livable community. Many Flagstaff non-profits and community organizations benefit from NAU interns. In years past, First Year Seminar classes at NAU have produced over 52,000 hours of community volunteer time per year.

Traffic: The 18-29 age group are the most likely to walk, bike, and take the bus around town than any other age group in Flagstaff.

Crime: Public meetings sometimes correlate students with higher crime rates. Any speculation that students are causing a disproportionate amount of crime in Flagstaff is exactly that – speculation. The FPD doesn’t release crime statistics on specific populations.

NAU Needs to Provide Housing for its Students: Despite the housing crisis we are experiencing in Flagstaff and on NAU’s campus, NAU provides more housing per capita than 99% of other universities in the country.

As much as individual students might irritate us, NAU students are not the root of NAU’s growth problem. 60% of NAU students are in need of financial aid, and 47% are first-generation college students. When NAU increases its enrollment at an unsustainable rate, the students also suffer: class sizes increase, programs lose funding, more classes are taught online, and faculty/student ratios increase.

If we want to make Flagstaff a more livable community, then we need to engage with students and organize with them, not blame them for the problems that are caused by a money-making institution. 

And just as we cannot blame students for the growth, we must also remember NAU’s own influences. The growth mandate came from the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR), not NAU. Only one of ABOR’s twelve members comes from Flagstaff and potentially understands the challenges of our fair city. Perhaps NAU administration could be doing more to fight the growth mandate handed down by ABOR, or maybe the administration feels powerless and dejected as well. We encourage our members who are frustrated about the growth of NAU to contact ABOR. They have physical addresses, email addresses and phone numbers here:
https://www.azregents.edu/about/board-members (click on their names for full details). 

F3 remains committed to meaningful zoning and development guidelines and restrictions, preserving the character of Flagstaff, and finding solutions that are realistic and beneficial to all our residents.

And we, as students, will continue to be friends of Flagstaff’s past, present, and Friends of Flagstaff’s Future.

To read the complete letter, click HERE