FICTIONAL HALLS OF RESIDENCE URGED

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30529, 26 August 1964, Page 2

FICTIONAL HALLS OF RESIDENCE URGED

The establishment of fictional halls of residence, a scheme under which university students actually lived in private board but were gathered together in small, non-residential clubs, was recommended by Mrs Helen Garrett (Christchurch) in a paper on student accommodation at the thirteenth triennial conference of the New Zealand Federation of University Women in Dunedin yesterday.

“Fictional” halls were used in some English universities, she said. Each was about the same size as an actual hall of residence, each with its own distinctive name, club premises and a warden. They carried the same sporting, social and other activities as a real residence and the students dined together at regular intervals.

when not in the classroom or the library, she said. This could be done by the addition of quiet-rooms for work or reading and more varied facilities for eating, ranging from snack bar to restaurant.

The development of flats as student houses was another suggestion made. “I’m not going to suggest that we should be happy to let all our students go into flats instead of asking the Government to provide residences for them, but I am going to say that many senior students do manage very well in flats and that this is a phenomenon that has come to stay,” she said. “For the right students it is an important alternative to hails of residence and one that the university could even foster and help along—as I believe you do here in Dunedin. Flats, Houses

It would certainly be very much cheaper for a university to build two or three of these club-premisee type of ball than to erect complete residences, she said. “They would contain everything that a real residence had, except the actual sleeping facilities, such as a dincommonroom, some small quiet rooms for working and perhaps a warden’s flat Second Best "Such an idea U only second best to a good residence, but it would be a positive step towards combatting the isolation of the student, particularly the first-year student, in private board," she said. Mrs Garrett said the public affairs group of the Canterbury branch of the federation, of which she is convener, bad spent a fuU year studying the living conditions of students at the University of Canterbury. “We believe that halls of residence have a real educational value, if they ere well constituted and weß run, with an appropriate number of widely-educated adults in residence, dignified buildings, good amenities, and a general atmosphere that is conducive to private study,” she said.

English universities were coming to realise the need for student flats. In Edinburgh the university was acquiring houses, adapting them and furnishing them as student houses or flats and reducing the number of new halls of residence. “It is interesting that the University of Sydney is also doing the same sort of thing,” she said. There the university, in association with the Students’ Representative Council, proposed to develop them as student houses. ■This kind of new focus on alternative forms of accommodation seemed to the women’s study group really constructive. “We feel that the imaginative development of alternative forms of accommodation for students is just as important as the extension of student residences (as well as much cheaper) and should receive equally serious consideration,” Mrs Garrett said.

pany of other young people studying a variety of subjects end the informal contact with educated adults, which was the great value of a good hall of residence.

An idea which might help offset the isolation of students in private board or flats was the extension of the students’ association building, or students’ centre, into a place where students might profitably spend most of their time

High Cost But student residences were very expensive to build. They cost about £2OOO a bed. The new Christchurch College at Uam would bouse only 120 men students at a cost of £258.000, she said. The Government was this year borrowing to cover its expenditure on university land, buildings and capital equipment. Money spent on student residences, important as they were, might mean money not spent on other aspects of university development Universities themselves could not be expected to look favourably on wholesale spending of vast sums on student residences if it meant there would be less to spend on libraries, laboratories and new special schools. Private Board With a Little luck and some searching, through lodgings officers, church organisations or friends, students could still find good private board not too far from the university in most centres, she said. But the chief difficulty for the students in private board was their isolation. They kicked the stimulating com-