The increase in student intake, and hence the increase in demand for hall accommodation is inevitable. We do recognize this problem and hence would like to offer some alternative solutions to this issue.
Off-Campus accommodation
Off-Campus accommodation may be much more costly than hall accommodation.
However, it does have its benefits as well. Unlike Hall accommodation, students are not compelled to take part in any activities to gain points to stay. It is true that off-campus accommodation deprives us of hall life, but for students who would like to take part in external activities and find it too busy to be involved in school events; this would be a very viable option for them to consider. Also, this accommodation provides the student with much more privacy as compared to hall communal style of living. Moreover, off-campus accommodation at times is more conducive for studying as it is less noisy than halls.
Currently, the school does have a department overseeing off-campus accommodation. However, in my opinion, this option is not much publicized. Hall life is much more promoted in the University. It is true that staying in a hall is much more convenient than staying in apartments outside the university. Yet, I’m sure that there will be international students who will not mind getting a taste of residing in an off-campus apartment as the experience that they get is much different from hall communal living.
The school can consider hunting for more of such apartments, and actively promote them to incoming students as well as existing students. This will help to cut down demand of hall accommodation. This being a short term measure to curb with the delay of construction of new halls is much more viable as it will not lower the standard of living in current halls.
Renovating of ‘Block 19’, the building of Old Hall 3
This building can be renovated and refurnished into one that is suitable for accommodation. It can house around 300 residents and help to relieve some of the increase in student intake. Moreover, some of these rooms can be converted into triple sharing to allow students who do not mind staying to try out the living conditions. They can then provide valuable feedback to the school before the full-fetch triple room conversion takes place. Also, since it’s going to be re-renovated, the school will be able to improve the facilities over there to help cater to the number of residents residing there.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Problems associated with triple-room conversion
These are the problems that we foresee will unfold based on the current triple-sharing show room. You may or may not agree with them. Please give your comment and also voice out any other problems that you may foresee.
1) Technical issues with the layout
· The height of the double-decker bed as well as loft bed is too low for comfort, as people who are either sitting on the lower level of the bed or standing up at the table below the loft bed will easily hit their heads.
· With the layout of the room, it is almost impossible to squeeze in a fridge or a television set. The school may say that this is a luxurious option that residents can do without. However, to the existing students, this has almost become a necessity to us and something that we cannot do without.
· The fan that is being changed is too small for even minimal comfort. With our current fan in hall, it is already not strong enough during days where the temperature is exceptionally high. Many of the residents are even getting standing fan in the room to attain a minimal comfort level. With such a small fan, it is definitely not feasible and with the limited amount of space, it is also not possible to put in another standing fan.
2) Over-use of hall facilities (School’s research and our point of view)
· Toilets: Currently, for Hall 9-11, the ratio of residents per cubicle is around 4.5. For Hall 3 and Hall 16, based on the school calculation, its 7.5. Therefore, with the implementation of triple room, the increase ratio to 8 is deemed acceptable.
· Reading Room: The school will extend the reading room hours. This, to the residents, is not very feasible. Extending hours do not mean an increase of space.
3) Price of triple room
· The price of the triple room will be set at $140 per month. This is to cover the cost in conversion. This price is only $20 below the current double room price and henceforth, is not attractive enough for anyone to take up a triple room. With no price advantage, I do not see anyone wanting to opt for a triple room.
4) Noise Level
· Many halls are getting complaints from various living apartments around them for being too noisy. With Triple room conversion, the noise problem will be even more severe than it is as of now.
5) Social Issues
· Living together in a room is sometimes not easy for many people. Learning to adapt to each other way of life takes time. For a double sharing room, many problems associated with different lifestyle are already surfacing out. With a triple sharing room, the problems will definitely be even more visible.
1) Technical issues with the layout
· The height of the double-decker bed as well as loft bed is too low for comfort, as people who are either sitting on the lower level of the bed or standing up at the table below the loft bed will easily hit their heads.
· With the layout of the room, it is almost impossible to squeeze in a fridge or a television set. The school may say that this is a luxurious option that residents can do without. However, to the existing students, this has almost become a necessity to us and something that we cannot do without.
· The fan that is being changed is too small for even minimal comfort. With our current fan in hall, it is already not strong enough during days where the temperature is exceptionally high. Many of the residents are even getting standing fan in the room to attain a minimal comfort level. With such a small fan, it is definitely not feasible and with the limited amount of space, it is also not possible to put in another standing fan.
2) Over-use of hall facilities (School’s research and our point of view)
· Toilets: Currently, for Hall 9-11, the ratio of residents per cubicle is around 4.5. For Hall 3 and Hall 16, based on the school calculation, its 7.5. Therefore, with the implementation of triple room, the increase ratio to 8 is deemed acceptable.
· Reading Room: The school will extend the reading room hours. This, to the residents, is not very feasible. Extending hours do not mean an increase of space.
3) Price of triple room
· The price of the triple room will be set at $140 per month. This is to cover the cost in conversion. This price is only $20 below the current double room price and henceforth, is not attractive enough for anyone to take up a triple room. With no price advantage, I do not see anyone wanting to opt for a triple room.
4) Noise Level
· Many halls are getting complaints from various living apartments around them for being too noisy. With Triple room conversion, the noise problem will be even more severe than it is as of now.
5) Social Issues
· Living together in a room is sometimes not easy for many people. Learning to adapt to each other way of life takes time. For a double sharing room, many problems associated with different lifestyle are already surfacing out. With a triple sharing room, the problems will definitely be even more visible.
Please comment on the following points. Your comments are very valuable to us!
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?
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?
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Welcome!
To: Fellow NTU students and prospective NTU freshmen
It had been a well-known fact that the school is currently working on the conversion of double room to triple rooms in various halls in the coming semester. This is due to the increase intake of freshmen in the coming semester in accordance with the delay of the construction of the 4 new halls. In addition, this proposal also serves to relieve the strain on the waiting list from the Hall Allocation System. Two different versions of show rooms for the triple-sharing accommodation had been set up in Hall 13 and Hall 14 to gather feedback from the students.
Through various means of feedback and surveys, we do understand that a large proportion of the NTU population (including the students and professors) are not in favor of this conversion. We do see the cons of this implementation, which includes compromised basic needs, social problems and degrading of comfort level. Therefore, the Hall Presidents’ Council which constitutes all the Hall Presidents had been tying up with the school in many occasions to voice out the dissatisfaction of the students and will continue doing so.
However, we will not be able to do so without the support from the school population. Many residents and students alike are thinking that there is nothing we can do to put a halt to the conversion as the show-rooms are already out and everything is proceeding faster than we are expecting. Many professors, hall fellows and hall officers are also not supportive of this conversion as they do see the disadvantages and problems that are going to be attached with this implementation. As they are staff of the university, they have no choice but to follow the school’s direction.
We are different, we are the students of the university and these policies have direct impact on us and the incoming batch of students. If we do not do anything right now despite of all the problems that we expect to occur, the triple rooms’ conversion will unfold before our very eyes in the next moment. The incoming batch of freshmen will be most directly affected as many of them will be allocated to such rooms. If we were them, we would definitely hope that the current students will be able to ‘fight’ for their rights. Besides, some of us may also be randomly allocated to such rooms. As hall presidents, we have not given up on persuading the school to do away with the triple room implementation. We need the student population to be united together at this very moment to show our disgruntlement to the school and not just show our dissatisfaction among ourselves.
With this blog, we hope to gather views and opinions of the student population and also to update information to fellow school mates as well as the hall residents with regards to the triple room. Let's show our cohesiveness at this point of time and support the 'Say No to Triple' notion.
Hall Presidents’ Council 07/08
It had been a well-known fact that the school is currently working on the conversion of double room to triple rooms in various halls in the coming semester. This is due to the increase intake of freshmen in the coming semester in accordance with the delay of the construction of the 4 new halls. In addition, this proposal also serves to relieve the strain on the waiting list from the Hall Allocation System. Two different versions of show rooms for the triple-sharing accommodation had been set up in Hall 13 and Hall 14 to gather feedback from the students.
Through various means of feedback and surveys, we do understand that a large proportion of the NTU population (including the students and professors) are not in favor of this conversion. We do see the cons of this implementation, which includes compromised basic needs, social problems and degrading of comfort level. Therefore, the Hall Presidents’ Council which constitutes all the Hall Presidents had been tying up with the school in many occasions to voice out the dissatisfaction of the students and will continue doing so.
However, we will not be able to do so without the support from the school population. Many residents and students alike are thinking that there is nothing we can do to put a halt to the conversion as the show-rooms are already out and everything is proceeding faster than we are expecting. Many professors, hall fellows and hall officers are also not supportive of this conversion as they do see the disadvantages and problems that are going to be attached with this implementation. As they are staff of the university, they have no choice but to follow the school’s direction.
We are different, we are the students of the university and these policies have direct impact on us and the incoming batch of students. If we do not do anything right now despite of all the problems that we expect to occur, the triple rooms’ conversion will unfold before our very eyes in the next moment. The incoming batch of freshmen will be most directly affected as many of them will be allocated to such rooms. If we were them, we would definitely hope that the current students will be able to ‘fight’ for their rights. Besides, some of us may also be randomly allocated to such rooms. As hall presidents, we have not given up on persuading the school to do away with the triple room implementation. We need the student population to be united together at this very moment to show our disgruntlement to the school and not just show our dissatisfaction among ourselves.
With this blog, we hope to gather views and opinions of the student population and also to update information to fellow school mates as well as the hall residents with regards to the triple room. Let's show our cohesiveness at this point of time and support the 'Say No to Triple' notion.
Hall Presidents’ Council 07/08
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)