On Oct. 9, Sonoma State University president, Judy Sakaki, came to speak to the STAR newspaper about her experience with the North Bay fires, and answered questions about Sonoma State’s student life on campus, housing, safety, university improvement and more.

Judy Sakaki was one of many to lose their homes in the devastating fires. 

Her story began at 4:03 a.m. when she heard her smoke detector go off and then walked down the stairs to see flames already tearing up her house.  “We think it is just our house on fire. We were barefoot, in our bathrobes… I didn’t even have time to grab my cell phone… we jumped off the porch which was already in flames… We just took each other’s hand and started running because there was nothing else to do,” she said, describing the way she and her husband pushed each other to keep going.

Sakaki said it has been a long road of recovery, but she said, “What has lifted me are all of you students and the campus and the faculty here.”  She has lived in six different places since and has decided not to rebuild in favor of getting settled sooner. She just recently bought what she hopes is her permanent home.

She used an analogy to describe the strong community saying, “An imagery I have is of bamboo, as a plant this is a very strong plant, but it is also flexible.  A bamboo can blow from one side to the other and withstand through a strong wind. It can have various uses, it can transform itself. What is characteristic for me of that bamboo plant is that it remains flexible, no matter where it blows it’s eventually going to come back to center… If each of us maintain our core values of who you are, no matter what happens to you, you’re going to come back and continue to be resilient and thrive.”

When asked about how Sonoma State has responded to the fires, Sakaki explained that she thinks the school did an incredible job with the team they have and everyone bonded with all of the help they gave. Sonoma State made sure all of the students and faculty that had lost their homes were safe and got them the help they needed as well as students throughout campus.  

Student housing became critical to find especially after the fires. “We pride ourselves at Sonoma State that more than a third of our students live on campus.  I set a goal for us to have more than 50 percent of our students live on campus to create more of a sense of community.”  

The limited amount of housing is not only hurting students, but potential faculty on campus as well, Sakaki said.. Sonoma State loses one in five potential employees that they offer jobs to due to housing costs. That is why they are looking into purchasing a housing development off campus.

Also, the school wants to build more freshmen housing, where they would live closer together, in order to offer upperclassman students, transfer students, and faculty members more options for housing.

Sakaki says her biggest accomplishment thus far is refocusing the campus of success student.

Safety was an issue that was brought up and she said while the safety on campus is getting better, it is not quite there yet. “It’s about education,” she said. Sakaki said the way residential life is structured was looked at for improvement following last year’s dorm room stabbing. 

Sakaki went on further to say that putting cameras all around campus could potentially invade privacy of students, but there are cameras around the GMC and the school is looking to install lockers by the cafeteria.

She also announced that Sonoma State’s emergency plan has been updated and that on Oct. 25, the emergency operations team will be going through four days of intensive training.