Once graduating seniors walk through those double doors of Alumni Arena, what greets them is the challenge of finding a job. And then there's the debt – the heaping amount of student loans that they accumulated while being consumed by the stresses of college.
Ken Ilgunas was faced with these predicaments in the spring of 2006 when he earned his bachelor's degree from UB in English and history.
Spending his freshman year at a private university, Ilgunas racked up $32,000 in student loans as an undergraduate and was lucky to find adventurous ways of paying it off, like working as a lodge cleaner and tour guide near the Arctic Circle and as a backcountry ranger for the National Park Service.
It took working two and a half years for Ilgunas's debt to finally disappear. So when he enrolled in the graduate liberal studies program at Duke University last spring, he vowed to earn his degree debt-free – and he knew it would take some thinking out of the box.
Ilgunas decided to buy a van – a $1,500 Ford Econoline he found on Craigslist, to be exact – and made it his humble abode.
'Living in a van was my grand social experiment. I wanted to see if I could afford the unaffordable – an education,' he said.
Ilgunas has been living in the van that he parked on campus since January 2009, and he claims to live quite comfortably there.
'I cook on a backpacking stove that runs on propane canisters,' he said. 'I sleep in my backseat, which turns into a bed. I have tinted windows, shades, and sheets that give me privacy, [and] I shower and shave at the gym.'
Ilgunas says the Carolina winters aren't nearly as challenging for a van dweller as the frigid Western New York ones would be. It was about 10 degrees during the coldest night spent in the van, although he says there was nothing that he couldn't handle with his sleeping bag and heavy-duty thermal underwear.
'I knew a guy in the Alaskan Arctic who outfitted his Chevy Suburban with a woodstove that permitted him to sleep in temperatures as low as 60 below,' Ilgunas said. 'If he could do it in the Arctic, I knew I could do it in North Carolina.'
Afraid of getting caught, Ilgunas kept his living arrangement a secret until an essay he wrote for a travel-writing class found its way on the online news site Salon.com.
Almost overnight, the ‘van man' was transformed into a semi-famous cultural oddity. Media outlets began showing interest in Ilgunas's experiment and he was even offered compensation for his story to be told on Inside Edition – an offer he respectfully declined.
When the news of Ilgunas's living arrangements finally reached the administrators at Duke, he was surprisingly allowed to stay.
'Apparently, I'm not violating any campus parking laws,' Ilgunas said.
Dennis Black, vice president of student affairs at UB, says the question of a student making a campus parking lot their permanent home is not one he has considered at any length.
'Our primary concern is student health and safety and we would view the question first from that perspective – what are the state, local and campus standards, and does the situation comply or violate the standards?' he said. 'Next, we would work to find more appropriate housing with the student [and] explore on- and off-campus opportunities for living that are safe, healthy, and promote educational achievement.'
From his '94 Econoline sitting in a Duke parking lot, Ilgunas says that fame hasn't affected or bettered his life in the slightest – although he has gotten a book deal, which he says is still in the works.
As an aspiring writer, Ilgunas believes the opportunity to tell his story and reach out to those in similar circumstances is one he will likely pursue.
'My situation is not [such an] anomaly,' he said. 'It's actually quite typical. Students today unflinchingly go tens of thousands of dollars in debt without thinking about the consequences. When restricted by debt, we're forced to accept jobs that don't necessarily befit our character or education. Passions and dreams must be postponed. And a postponed dream is, well, no more than just a dream.'
The ‘van man's' advice? Think out of the box, just as he did.
'There is no sacred set of laws that says this is the only way to live. Shatter the formula and invent your own,' Ilgunas said. 'Buy a van, hitchhike, do that thing you've always dreamt of doing but haven't because it seemed strange or crazy. Live simply and wisely. Get out of debt. Follow your dreams rapaciously – if you don't do it this lifetime, then when will you?'
E-mail: features@ubspectrum.com
