Sean McGrenahan
Staff Writer
It’s October, and with the leaves browning and the skies above Trinity slowly beginning to match the stonework in Front Square, continuing students can once again can look towards a packed autumn. This time of year sees Trinity as its best, with students refreshed after long summers and untainted by the stresses that lie before them.
Many students though, close out the summer feeling anything but refreshed. For many, the frantic search for accommodation has rendered them drained before the year even begins. Finding private accommodation is a stressful business. I spent the summer working for the Student’s Union Accommodation Advisory Service and regularly (as well as truthfully) informed many a mammy and daddy of first year students that finding accommodation would be the most stressful thing their son or daughter would do all year.
For first years, searching for accommodation is particularly nightmarish. Even at a time when Trinity Hall’s fees are notably uncompetitive, demand remains high. After a slight fall in demand last year, Halls was once again this year, oversubscribed. This has left high numbers of first years, attempting to find ‘a room in a house’, with the implication that any room and any house will do. In its promotional material, Halls describes itself as providing a ‘soft landing’ for first year students. True, if only because the alternative is akin to being dropped on concrete from a height.
Searching for accommodation in Dublin is a minefield for the experienced student and infinitely worse for first years who know little about signing leases, and even less about transferring bills or handing over deposits. They’re fresh meat for nefarious landlords, so desperate to find somewhere before college starts that they often panic and settle for a high priced slum. One first year that I met even had to restart her search after unwittingly moving in with a drug addict in Summerhill.
While it is true that all students will eventually find ‘somewhere’ to live, for a first year ignorant of Dublin’s geography, Sheriff Street is ‘somewhere’ in the same way that Ranelagh is ‘somewhere’, and once the deposit is paid, there is little prospect of escape. Living in private accommodation can be just as difficult as finding it. Over the past few years, I’ve been at the butt-end of burst pipes, collapsing kitchen ceilings, leaking showers and a neighbor with an air-rifle who shot through the kitchen window. Granted, there was some fairly loud electro blaring but it’s a question of proportionality of response.
For many first years, the process of finding a place in a new city, while dealing with often unregulated landlords is simply too much. This summer, I encountered tears, despair and, on more than one occasion, a reconsideration of university choice. While this all sounds like hysteria to the experienced student, it does not negate the fact that the search for accommodation places an intolerable strain on some students who, through moving away from home, already feel the acute sting of upheaval.
There is a strong temptation to brush off the issue. After all, it’s a difficult market and a tortuous search is simply the nature of the beast. In fact, it’s character-building. However, the failure to provide a satisfactory solution for incoming First Years blunts Trinity’s competitive edge in a key area of concern among prospective students. Many universities in England place emphasis on ensuring sufficient university owned accommodation as a cornerstone of guaranteeing student welfare. The University of Manchester, for example, guarantees Halls accommodation to all first year students. This really does make a difference to the prospective student, particularly when they are met with Trinity’s alternative; a vague promise that first years might get Halls and little more certainty than that.
Naturally, this is a problem that is not going to be solved overnight. Trinity-owned accommodation is in short supply. The long term answer is simply to create more of the same; multiple, more economical Trinity Halls. This may be impossible at present, and like most leaps of progress, is inextricably tied to the outcome of the fees debate.
In the short term, however, progress can be made. Closer cooperation between the Accommodation Office, Trinity Hall and the SU Accommodation Advisory Service will allow more efficient solutions for students to be found. Selection criteria for college-owned accommodation must be transparent so that students can be advised on their prospective chances of securing college-owned accommodation and can search for private accommodation at the earliest possible juncture.
At present, student accommodation is an issue that is perennially placed on the backburner of college affairs. This is the price, it seems, that we pay for a city-centre campus. However, it is an issue that deserves concerted attention at the highest levels of college administration if it is ever to be tackled effectively. First years spending Fresher’s week in a hostel is one tradition that Trinity can probably live without.
