Campus Hostel is Essential and Should be Assured

Source of photo: 明報

About a hundred students attended a sit-in in Atrium, HKUST to call for an increase in hall bed places.

The shortage of student hall is in fact a piece of old news. It was noticed that the number of mainland students has been increasing since the past few years. A hall bed is guaranteed for each non-local student in HKUST. In the last summer, the Student Housing Office (SHO, responsible for hall allocation) unusually announced the number of hall bed for non-local students (most of them are probably mainland students). Later it was exposed that the university has enrolled excess mainland students.

In last few week hundred of students escaped from hall in mid-night to avoid being caught for living illegally at hall. Later it was reported that the room check for illegal inhabitants was merely specific for a room. The storm has, however, arisen discussions in some Internet forums. And the discussions finally led to the sit-in.

The lack of transparency in hall allocation has also been being criticised. It was well known among HKUST students that the allocation mechanism is a question mark, as there were frequent reports of one student having a hall bed while another student did not but they both live in the same estate.

Recently before the sit-in, student representatives have met with the vice president of HKUST, Roland Chin. Prof. Chin acknowledged the problem and promised to cut sharply the number of mainland exchange students from 100 in this semester to 4 in the coming semester. The hall allocation mechanism was also immediately announced.

Campus hostel is important for students' development of skills essential for survival in the society. They meet new peers and learn to take care of themselves. However, the incident showed the lack of care of the related departments in providing the hostel resource for local students.

A new hall will be ready for move-in in next school year. The new hall will ease the burden of hall demand, but will not help much after 2011, when 3-3-4 will be adopted in universities.

I have lived in hall in the past two years. It is a shame that I cannot complete my final year with a hall bed. For a situation like this now, however, I hope more hostel resource can be allocated to local freshmen.

If we want HKUST to be an international institute, enrolling most exchange students from our own country will not help. More students from foreign countries should be enrolled provided that the resource for this is adequate, so that the ratio of exchange students from different countries is near.