Why are Dormitories Dirty and not Managed Properly?
Why are Dormitories Dirty and not Managed Properly?
  • Reporter Lee Ji-a
  • 승인 2014.12.03 07:28
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The dormitories of POSTECH can accommodate up to all Postechains. Freshmen and sophomores live in Residential College (RC). Juniors and seniors live in Student Dormitories (SD). After each semester, everyone has to leave RC because high school students who participate in camps held by POSTECH live in RC. So during vacation, RC and another dormitory (dormitory #20) for freshmen  and sophomores are completely empty, except the 11th floor in RC. Then Housing Services cleans the rooms and regulates RC. But the situation of SD is quite different. The password of room is not programmed so new residents cannot enter the rooms. Also, the former resident sometimes does not empty the room, so the incoming resident may not be able to unpack. There is hair scattered around on the floor and a moldy odor fills the room. The Postech Times interviewed Kim Deok Soo (Director of Housing Services) and Choi Chul gi (Housing Service) to ask the reasons for such causes and how to solve these problems.

Manage and Sanitary Condition
Cleaning and checking all rooms takes a lot of time. But the winter or summer session starts the week after the end of the semester. Housing Services tells students to pack by Sunday to accommodate for students who have to be in Pohang because of exam and other reasons. Students who take summer or winter sessions want to move in on Monday morning. The time when former residents leave and the time when new residents move in overlap, so there is no time to clean the rooms. In the 90s there was a gap for a week between semester and session so SD was managed like RC. But the gap disappeared by the proposal of Undergraduate Association. (As parcel services were rare at that time, students did not want to move all their stuff home only to move everything back a week later.) After the summer or winter session, camp training of each club begins and students arrive at Pohang again. So Housing Services said that they check the empty rooms extensively after 4-5 weeks and they check occasionally until semester. But in this course they admitted that sometimes they miss some rooms. For the same reason, Housing Services cleans SD in semester but the cleaning is limited to floors only because there is so much other stuff in rooms. Unlike RC rooms, SD rooms are never completely unoccupied, so SD is hard to be managed.    

Culture of Postechians
They emphasized the importance of an atmosphere of consideration. They said “For students in other universities, initializing the password and simple cleaning are natural. But Postechians do not show the basic manners of allowing this yet. A culture of consideration is needed.” They emphasized the role of Dormitory Resident Association (DRA) in creating such an atmosphere, but making the culture in DRA is hard because the members of DRA leave for no more than a year or two. 
As long as the current schedule is followed, a perfect solution does not seem to exist. Now POSTECH is remodeling the dormitories. The remodeling of building 1-8 will be finished by the summer of 2016. Graduate student dormitories are also being remodeled, and remodeling of dormitories for women is being considered. After remodeling is completed, the condition should improve, but Postechians also have to try to be more understanding and considerate.