Some proposed changes in the current housing policies have raised concerns on campus. Students feel it is important have the freedom to select their roommates and this cannot be a part of a forced regulation.
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| A lot of people showed up for the debate. Photo: Arjan Reef |
The Executive Board Secretary Maurice Essers, and Susanne Wichman, the director of Student and Education Services Centre (S&O), responded to a barrage of questions from two hundred students in a lively debate on student housing at the Bastille on April 22.
The debate focused on a draft proposal plan titled `Vision Student Housing UT,' prepared at the request of the Executive Board and University Council. The majority of students participating in the debate disagreed on key points in the document; the most sensitive issue was the proposed abolishment of the time-honored tradition known to Dutch students as hospiteren, or conducting interviews to see if a student fits in a living group.
One of the few international students at the debate who had just applied for housing on campus placed emphasis on the importance of maintaining a `good sense of community,' saying, `It's important that people can choose with whom they want to live. I'm for internationalization but I think it won't work if people are forced to do it. Encouragement is nice.' Stephan Bosch, president of the Central Residence Council, echoed this sentiment, `If you force integration, it's always a problem.'
In rebuttal to student's statements and feelings of not being heard, Wichman said, `We don't want to force anything. We just want to hear your prospective. What ideas are there to encourage people to be more international? Science is global. Business is global. Globalization is going on at this university and students have to globalize. It's a process, and we don't have all the answers.'
At the moment, the UT has approximately 8,850 enrolled students of which 1,086 are international, according to the figures in the draft proposal. The university hopes to grow to 10,000 students and this growth will be mostly international. Currently, the number of available accommodation units on campus is 2,260 of which 10 percent are furnished rooms. In line with the percentage of international people connected with the university who will need housing in the future, the UT aims to have a higher percentage of furnished rooms.
`You have simple math,' said a student, `if you have a number of students living on campus, and you want to have more students then it means you need more houses.' Esser responded, `We would like to build more houses but the university has to discuss this with the local government.'
Collectively, many students argued against imposing the regulation, which makes it mandatory to have one to two international students in each shared accommodation group on campus. `If you want to make integration start, you don't have to start with housing,' contended a student during the debate, punctuating his desire for a more natural and organic approach to integration through stimulating international students to join sports and cultural communities to meet and integrate with Dutch people.
While another student at the debate voiced economic concerns in view of the plan's goal to furnish all housing units with self-contained showers and toilets. He asked: will this vision increase housing costs? `Not everyone can pay for it.'
The Executive Board awaits the results of a study, showing the opinions of 1,500 students on the current housing situation that is being conducted in cooperation with the municipality of Enschede, the Youth Foundation Housing Twente (SJHT) and the Veste/Acasa Housing Foundation. Maurice Essers assured students that the results of the study, along with a new draft proposal, will be released before the close of the academic year.
Over the next week, students who are still interested to voice their opinions can register to be on a committee established to act as a sounding board on student housing issues. Interested students can fill in a registration form at the Student Union website: www.studentunion.utwente.nl/housing.
