Students frustrated at Copenhagen dormitory

A conflict at the Tåsingegade-kollegiet dorm over a common room has angered students from the University of Copenhagen

by Petra Nita

A sudden closure of a common room, and claims that students from another institution are given better treatment, is behind an atmosphere of increasing bad feeling at the Tåsingegade-kollegiet dormitory.

The rooms on the 3rd and 4th floor at Tåsingegade 29 are rented by the University of Copenhagen from the company Nordicom. The common room is the only place in the building where the students can get together.

The closure of the room was sudden and without prior warning or debate, explains resident Monika Messala, a life science student.

»We just found a note on the door saying ‘Closed until Monday’«.

Bottle flung out of window

Asked by the University Post, Pim de Jager, Property Manager at Nordicom A/S, explains that the closure is due to the University of Copenhagen students breaking the house rules.

»People have been using the common room as a place to hold parties in until late at night. The room is allowed to be used until 22.00 hours, and parties should not be held there until late at night,« he emphasises.

According to him, a bottle was thrown out of the window during one of the parties. From now on, the students can only open one window – the rest are blocked.

DIS parties

One thing is the closure of the common room, another is that the University of Copenhagen students feel that students from the private university institution DIS (Danish Institute for study Abroad) are being treated differently,

The 2nd floor is rented by DIS, which means that only their students have access there.

But the University of Copenhagen students wonder why they are not allowed in the common room on the 2nd floor, and why there are parties every weekend, without anyone complaining about them.

»There have been parties almost every weekend at the second floor, but no one said anything about it,« says Cezary Zawadka, a University of Copenhagen student from Poland.

Same rules apply

DIS is not given special treatment, according to Pim de Jager of Nordicom. And the DIS students have not been holding back-to-back parties, like the University of Copenhagen students claim.

»I have been informed that they, in the past three weeks have been on excursions in the weekends and they therefore not have used their common room. Their common room is theirs and the rules also apply for them, « he says.

Up to the students now

Since the University Post started looking into the case, the 4th floor common room has been opened, preliminarily, again on weekends, so long as the University of Copenhagen students don’t break the rules.

But it could be closed again if the administration receives more complaints, Pim de Jager warns. The building has strict rules which the students must obey.

»This kind of misbehaviour has consequences,« he says.

Uni-avis@adm.ku.dk

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