More rooms at Lincoln

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 4

More rooms at Lincoln

By

MARITA VANDENBERG

The Lincoln College Council yesterday approved the building of additional student accommodation. One eight-bed double unit for single students, and four flats, with a total of eight bedrooms, for married students, will be ready for use by the start of next year. With a rise of 20 per cent in student numbers this year the college expects accommodation needs to increase markedly in coming years. In justifying the call for more accommodation, the union and halls management committee said that 40 students who applied in 1989 for accommodation had been unsuccessful. Overseas married students with children had a particular problem in getting affordable accommodation near the college, they said. The new units are expected to cost nearly $500,000 and will be funded from the accumulated funds from flats the college already lets. When questioned whether the flats would vie with two new lecture theatres for any funding, the college principal, Professor Bruce Ross, said the flats were a far lower priority. “We will have to look again at student accommodation because we’re not going to get the subsidies we got in the past. We don’t know what the funding formula for next year will be — we have to take a leap in the dark while we’re in the transition stage.” Professor Ross said a special comminee had been set up three years ago to examine the issues of student accommodation but it had never met.