As a student at UB, you have faced long lines, and updated your Facebook status to tell everyone about it.
You've had a nasty tasting dinner from one the various restaurants on campus and never gone back.
You've circled the parking lots for 20 minutes only to decide to give up and skip the class and thought that your life was rough.
Compared to Brian Borncamp, what you may think of as a bit rough is something he might consider luxurious.
Borncamp, 21, spent the past month making himself a cabin in the North Campus woods. He has fended off chipmunks from his food stash, had his stuff stolen, and shaken worms out of his boots after heavy rains.
Borncamp said he was driven to the wilderness due to high costs of education.
UB officials weren't buying that. They told Borncamp to take his possessions – some textbooks and tools – and leave the woods, banning him from going back.
Borncamp, a sophomore philosophy and computer science major originally from Baldwinsville, NY, took to the woods after spending the beginning of the summer sleeping on his mattress in the stairwells of Fronczak hall.
'I had some interesting experiences in the stairwells,' Borncamp said.
The reason he was there to begin with was simple, according to Borncamp. It came down to money.
Borncamp said he moved into the stairwell after moving out of his apartment, unable to afford tuition, rent and other expenses.
'I was once woken up by a construction worker. He woke me up and said ‘Whoa, sorry to wake you up man. Whoa. You got a mattress in here? What, are you camping out, man? That's crazy',' he said.
For the most part sleeping in the stairwell wasn't too bad, according to Borncamp. A pair of earplugs and his mattress were enough to get to sleep.
His time in the stairwell came to an end after an electrician stumbled upon him early one summer morning. Soon after, University Police asked for Borncamp's ID – and from there, he was referred to the Student-Wide Judiciary.
Borncamp moved to the woods after the encounter in the stairwells. He rented a truck and began moving his stuff, which was hidden throughout campus in lockers and ceiling tiles, to the edge of the tree line.
His first two attempts at life in the wilderness ended in hardship. While at work, his stuff was taken on two occasions. When UPD officers took his possessions the first time he was able to reclaim his possessions, consisting of some lumber and tools, at the lost and found.
Borncamp is unsure of who took his stuff the second time, but he learned from the experience and took some time off work to complete his cabin in a short period of time instead of trying to do it between shifts.
The experience of living in the woods was very calming, according to Borncamp. A typical day consisted of waking up early, due to the sun rising around 6 a.m., and working on building his cabin or doing some reading.
'The one thing that was pretty terrible was after it rained, the ground would be covered in worms,' Borncamp said. 'They were just everywhere, I would wake up some days and have to kick six worms out of my boot. Occasionally there would be mosquitoes, especially because I was near a creek, but usually a small campfire would take care of them.'
Borncamp says that his initial purpose for moving out into the woods was for reasons of utility. By only working part time, he was spending too much on rent and tuition. So he began thinking of ways to cut costs.
'I was looking at my expenses and seeing what I could reduce,' Borncamp said. 'I had a good buffer built up. I had been working for about a year and half, I was in school then dropped out and was working for awhile.'
Despite taking time off school to work, Borncamp did not have enough saved to afford everything coming into this school year.
'At this point, being a full time student is not even a feasible possibility,' Borncamp said. 'Without being able to take out a loan or having some sort of financial aid coming in, it's one of those things were you run the numbers and it's just impossible.'
Although Borncamp was not at his cabin when UPD found it, he received a message on his phone from investigator James Budniak saying: 'We found your home and we have your property.'
Borncamp says his experience with Budniak was very diplomatic and that he was friendly. However, Borncamp was less than impressed with the way Dennis Black handled the situation.
'It was interesting to see what Dennis Black had to say in the [Buffalo News] article,' Borncamp said. 'This is supposed to be a flagship school of new and progressive ideas, an opening manifold for the future and just to hear him say, ‘No, we're not going to work with you on anything, what you're doing is coloring outside the lines,' so it's sort of a very rigid system and that was the most disappointing thing about it.'
Borncamp doesn't see himself as an average student, pointing out the fact that he has built a cabin and had two articles about himself in the Buffalo News, but at the same time he goes to classes like everybody else and is working toward a degree.
'If I could, I would go back out there and start over, but I'm banned from the woods and haven't been back,' Borncamp said.
E-mail: spectrum-features@buffalo.edu
