Playing Grown-Up
I think it has finally hit me what bothers me (so much) and, by extension, bothers a lot of people (so much) about Utah County-slash-Happy Valley-slash-Provo (specifically).
One of the major bodies here are the students at BYU and UVU (you might have known it (more recently) as UVSC). You see, as a society we live a known double standard. Specifically, we call people who reach the age of 18 adults. They can vote, go to war, die for the country, and be sent to jail for the rest of their lives. Their records will always be open to the public unless otherwise specified by the courts, and, as an outcome, we (society) expect these people to make choices and be (somewhat) reliable.
At the same time, though, we also look at people in their early- to mid- 20's as still being young, children. Though we allow them to go out and make life-altering decisions and do life-altering things; we also don't really expect a lot from them when they go out into the world and do what they are allowed to do. People in their early- to mid- 20's can screw up their lives, go deeply into debt, get into accidents, flunk, fail, and whatever, and still be considered a good, respectable member of society.
In psychology, a person does not reach certain aspects of maturity until he or she has reached (about) the age of 26.
This has some pretty lasting impacts on how we choose to live our lives. And it has impacts on the way a group will respond to and interact with that group, as a whole.
When you consider that the population of students (BYU) is approximately 25,000 strong, and then you have about the same number at UVU. This is a large economical base, and one of the reasons that apartments, restaurants, movie theatres, and other venues exist in this area to the size and extent that they do.
As a result, the population of people around Utah County is, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, was (in 2006) 464,760 people. Of that a little over 100,000 people live in Provo. Orem has nearly 90,000. As a result, the outcome is that nearly 50,000 people in this area (one quarter) are students and (as a result of being students) are also very transient.
Students are flakes. One quarter of the population in Utah County (not really... the county houses more than 400,000 people closer to half a million, really), in the Provo/Orem area are students. The closer you get to the center of that (2 mile radius around BYU) the more flakey the area becomes.
All of this leads up to a need, in my life, of some notion of reliability and stability. Provo, Utah County, and (unfortunately) Utah is an extension of that flakiness.
The University of Utah has a student population of nearly 22,000 people with Salt Lake County's population sitting around 1 million and Salt Lake proper's population of nearly 180,000. Granted, the percentage of the population in Salt County is less than the percentage in Utah County, but I am only sampling the student populations by school.
One of the influences of BYU, UVU, and UofU is that people come to Utah in order to get an education and then stay in Utah because they have found the Holy Land. As a result, people, members of the LDS church, move to Utah and then never leave. They move to Utah and become inculcated into the culture here and then never leave because of marriage, job, and etc.
What happens is that the student population has such an economic impact on the Utah County area (remember this is what I have a problem with - more so than other parts of the state) that students run the culture of the area. You move here, you become comfortable, you marry someone, and collectively you decide to stay. The outcome is that, as a result of your moving here and learning the nature of the area, the culture of BYU (and other schools), and the nature of Utah County is that the people are flakey here.
The outcome of all of these numbers of the economic impact of the student population is that people between the ages of 18 and 23 can move into this area and have quite a bit of economic power. As a result of that, they get to think they are grown up, they get to act as though they are making adult decisions, and they get to pretend that what they are doing will have lasting consequences and, at the same time, will not adversely (or positively) affect them in the future. All of this, the economic factors, the population, the increased number of individuals who choose to remain (and do stay) create a situation that goes counter to what (at this point in my life) I want.
I want stability. I want reliability.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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