Right to campus dorms

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-27 10:58

Schools can't arrange dormitory rooms for students based on their economic conditions, says an article in Qilu Evening Post. The following is an excerpt:

As a recent report said, the dormitories at Guizhou Institute of Light Industry are classified into two types: the cheap one that costs students only 300 yuan per bed per year and the expensive one that costs them 700 yuan per bed per year.

The difference between the two lies in the fact that the rooms in the expensive dormitories have separate toilets and larger space for each student. Many parents hoped their children could live in the cheap rooms, but they were told by the school to present evidence of their family's economic conditions before their children were allowed to move in.

Since all students are equal on campus, the right to live in cheap or expensive rooms should be in the hands of students themselves. Moreover, cheap rooms are not equivalent to the subsidies offered by the government to the families with lower incomes, so there is no need to demand students to offer such evidence.

According to reports, the school authorities explained that they issued the rule just for the convenience of management. But in my view, they lied. What they really wanted is to guarantee the occupancy rate of the expensive rooms they built. It is obvious that the fewer the students who live in expensive rooms, the less money the authorities can get from them.

Previously, the Ministry of Education had released a notice, requiring higher education institutions not to arrange dormitory rooms according to the economic conditions of students. The practice followed by Guizhou Institute of Light Industry was obviously against the central government's order.