“Where’s Asham Court?” I heard a fresh-faced fresher ask on their first night-out in Edinburgh, despite it being only a fifteen-minute walk away from the hallowed gates of Pollock Halls and housing fellow freshers. This interaction spoke volumes about the failing of undergraduate accommodation at the University of Edinburgh.
While many of the accommodations catering for freshers are in similar areas, there is little social overlap between them. Freshers’ events are based in each individual accommodation, entrenching the separation of undergraduates from the outset of their time at the university. Inter-accommodation social events and designated lunch “drop-ins” for freshers could challenge this entrenched system of isolation and unite the undergraduate community.
One of the roots of this problem is the catering difference between accommodations. Those in Pollock Halls are catered for both breakfast and dinner, helping them to reinforce their inter-Pollock bonds but preventing them from mixing with those in other accommodations. Similarly, the self-catered freshers in Kincaid’s Court have little reason to venture beyond their kitchens and try out the food in the JMCC, since they have likely met few people from Pollock. A solution to this problem might be a designated lunch “drop-in” for freshers in one of the central university dining areas, enabling first-years from all accommodations to meet each other.
The second root of this problem is the house system within Pollock Halls. It suggests that Lee house, one of the nine Pollock houses, is solely a thriving microcosm of the broader Pollock community, not alluding to their role as a member of the wider Edinburgh University undergraduate community. This is compounded by inter-Pollock sports league, creating the illusion that Pollock Halls is a self-contained community, isolating its freshers from the rest of their year group. A remedy to this issue could be to “twin” accommodations across the city with a few coordinated freshers’ events in the evenings of Welcome Week or throughout the day. The result of this would be greater social cohesion across the first-year student body, breaking down the social barriers that exist between accommodations.
So why don’t we campaign for accommodation twinning and lunch drop-ins? This quasi-collegiate system – epitomised by the social insularity of Pollock Halls – isolates those who don’t immediately find their tribe, obstructing them from meeting like-minded freshers from other accommodations. Co-ordinated events during Welcome Week would bring these people together from the outset, reducing any inklings of imposter syndrome. Aided by lunch drop-ins, this movement would alter the socially disparate quality of Edinburgh accommodation and reaffirm the university values of inclusion, cohesion, and mutual respect.
“Edinburgh University St-Leonard’s Hall 02” by Ad Meskens is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.