Their Ups and Their Downs
by Marit Versteeg
“WHERE do you live?” is without a doubt one of the most frequently asked questions you will get as a fresh and innocent IntRoweek kiddie. For me, this usually resulted in a long story about Villex, 7th semester overflow and my moving date. Together with about thirty other new students, I live in a temporary campus location. Fewer people, more space, and not even that much more rent. Sounds like we are the luckiest students on campus, doesn’t it?
In most respects this is proba-bly true. Nieuwe Haven is a lovely old house with only seven other residents. The rooms are all around 30 m2 includ-ing private bathrooms and kitchens. There is a view on the Zeeuwse library, a tiny fire escape-related balcony, and even a garden! Zacharias Jansenstraat is a super new building with two gigan-tic kitchens and a nice terrace. Hof van Sint Pieter is beautifully situated near the abbey and in Zuidsingel people all have their own balcony.
But now the other side of the sto-ry, caused by that sneaky word ‘tem-porary’. On the 31st of December this year, we have to move out of our spacious rooms. Destination unknown, as our final rooms still have to be assigned to us. Most people I have talked to quite like their temporary homes, and would not want to be separated from their rooms and house mates anytime soon.
I myself am very confused about the whole matter. On the one hand, I really want to move to an actual campus lo-cation with lots of people. On the other hand, I absolutely love the life and little routines that I have in Nieuwe Haven, and I love my house mates even more. I would even go as far as saying that we have a more active social agenda than most houses or hallways, and we don’t even have a common room! As I am writing this, there is a pancake flip-ping competition going on between my housemates, my friends and some more random people that came over. Another time we dragged some extra mattresses to one of the rooms and had a surprise sleepover. The most impres-sive social gathering that has happened so far was probably a bring & share din-ner where we somehow fit 21 people into one room, without having to make people sit on the floor.
The ideal solution would be to let all the people from temporary locations move into the same campus location, instead of dispersing them over the four locations at random. Sadly, however, there are no empty houses in Bagijn-hof, and no empty floors in Roggeveen, Koestraat or Bachtensteene. Therefore, what I would like to propose is that we all get together on a sunny Saturday, pick up the temporary locations, and move them as a whole to the nice grassy patch next to Bagijnhof. Make it a new permanent campus location. You can all stay for dinner.
Marit Versteeg, Class of 2018, who is interested in Psychology and Law, is from Tholen, the Netherlands.
