Many discussions had been held in both formal and informal occasions with the Dean of Student for the past weeks. The JCRCs were presented many facts from the research that they had done and at times, were dumbfounded by these facts, henceforth unable to give him an acceptable debate to his points at the very moment. Below are the summary that I had collated during these conversations and with a student population of 20 000, I do hope that we will be able to provide alternative views to them. Kindly submit your point of view through the comments option as of the end of this post. These comments would be very useful for us.
1) Most people on the very first encounter with this issue will definitely say that the reason they do not want a triple room is because they feel that the space in a typical hall room is small and the conversion will cause the space allowance to be below comfort level.
Facts in rebuttal of this point:
-Currently, rooms in other universities such as University of Washington are triple sharing. Photos and Research had been duly done.
-Everyone’s perception of space is different and we cannot gauge the comfort level with the current standard of room.
-In a typical living HDB flat, the size of a room is smaller than what we have in our halls and in a typical Singapore family, this room is shared by 2 siblings, and hence using such comparison, the ratio size of a triple sharing room is acceptable and considered within the comfort zone. Moreover, in countries like Hong Kong, the typical size ratio is even much smaller.
Students’ typical rebuttal:
-Comparison of HDB flat size ratio is not compatible with a Hall room size ratio, as a flat consist of other parts such as living room, kitchen, reading room etc. (Sch pt: Hall consist of other facilities such as pantry, canteen, reading room-It’s just different from a house and its really hard to bring this point across most of the time)
-It is also not fair to compare with other countries.
Point of discussion:
What is the definition of space and comfort level by students?
What are the needs and space size required by the students in their room to attain minimal comfort level?
2) This conversion also serves as a measure to relieve the strain on the waiting list. There is a handful of international students who are not able to get a room in hall under the Hall Allocation System and yet, unable to rent a room outside school due to financial difficulties. These students, therefore, have to squat in their friends room until they get a room. With the triple room implementation, they will be able to get a room to stay.
Point of discussion:
Are we considered as not compassionate towards these fellow school mates by rejecting the triple room proposal?
Are squatter’s life considered undesirable?
Squatter vs Triple room? Which one would you choose if you weren’t allocated any room?
3) The university currently, has the policy of guaranteed accommodation for all freshmen. Most universities in Singapore and around the world do not have the policy of guaranteed accommodation. Why? This is because of the limited numbers of rooms that they can provide. NTU does have a lot of rooms that are available for students to live in, but due to the increase intake as well as the delay in construction of new halls, the demand of these rooms will well exceed the supply of the rooms. Does the school still want to maintain this policy despite of the space constraint and by degrading the standard of living to meet its motive?
Point of discussion:
If you were freshmen entering the university, would you prefer to have a guaranteed accommodation or would you prefer to have a more comfortable room to live in?
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2 comments:
i would like to say sth abt the sch's rebuttal to the first point...
i feel that it is not necessary for us to use other universities or other countries as a measure to how we are going to lead our lives..
in fact, if i rem correctly, not long ago there was an article in which Mr. LKY commented that it is not a good idea to allow our singapore population to grow to 6or8 million (i can't rem the exact figures)..n live juz like how people in hong kong lives..
now hongkongers live in v limited spaces..and their houses are built v near to each other..
Mr. LKY commented that he believes there should be a certain level of comfort zone for everyone...
why i am quoting this article which appeared on straits times was that
1) to say that other universities or other countries have done sth in a certain way doesn't always mean that it is a good thing to follow them. we should not BLINDLY follow. what it should be done is to consider EVERYONE. following blindly only shows one's stupidity..
2)apparently, our singapore govt's policy is hoping that each of us living here can get at least a certain level of comfort level. so why are we going against this policy?
another point:
- yes it is true that a HDB room may even be smaller than a hostel room..
however, i guess that is one of the reasons why people want to stay in hall..because it provides a conducive environment for a student to study..
personally, i'm unable to study at my 5 room HDB home because i have many family members n hence i share room with my siblings.. but as what they said, the hdb room is smaller n hence there isn't a proper study table for me to study at home..and given the no. of people in my home, there is always distractions from them..
hence, since i moved to hall, i always prefered to study or do my project etc in hall.. which provided a very good environment for me to do my sch work...
however, with triple sharing, u may rebutt that we are still able to study in hall.. but with more pple, means more noise, more relationship problems, more complicated issues to resolve and hence once again we are distracted from our sch work.. which we are suppose to do over here in uni
pls understand that..we are students, not study robots..
it is possible and necessary for us to handle all these issues that happens btw human beings who lives tgt..however, our brain n time is limited...
adding one more person to a double room adds to this relationship issue and distracts us from what we are suppose to be doing (which i mean our sch work)
before this problem has escalated to the present state, the university had refused to do anything about it.
i guess only the seniors will know about this. the issue of insufficient rooms was brought up a few years ago, when only hall 3 was tore down to build the building for SPMS while residents of hall 7 cannot move into the currently new hall 16 due to the lack of rooms for the general student population.
there was a general forum held by SU and i attended it. i rem one of the university representatives present on that day was prof koh tai ann, former deans of students. and when this issue was raised, she avoided the question by pushing the blame on the students. she and the other representatives present listed examples from foreign countries, like in the states, whereby students borrow loans to build their own hostels, and that we are not taking the initiative to build the hostels. the university's stand was that they needed their funds to build more important school buildings, and there is no plans at that moment to build more halls as they felt that the rooms then was sufficient for the years to come.
ya right. they have no money that they can afford to let NBS buy chairs that cost a few thousand dollars each for every single professor in NBS. u can do the sums how much was spent there.
what i have seen in my years in ntu is that the administrative pple have no brains to see the future. when there is an increase in the courses and student intakes, this current problem is so unavoidable that i must say they are blind not to see it till now.
now then the university say they have plans to build the new halls but due to the IR they cannot build. a whole lot of crap if u ask me. they are giving this excuse only to try and get off the hook. i believe in the next 5 years, there will still be no halls being built cos there will be a new university built by then and they will wanna see if the new university will cause any impact to the total number of students enrolled. they will juz let us complain all we want since we do not have a SU that formed any strong resistance to the university's policies.
turning the halls into triple sharing room is one of their scheme to raise the hall fees once again. they failed to increase the rates as much as they wanted 2 years back due to the protest from the student population. they even tried to use NUS to back up their reason to raise the hall fees then. and now they can form a legitimate reason that they need to create a price difference between the triple rooms and the double rooms due to the demand and supply situation.
all comes down to money in the end. and not the benefits to the students.
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