Reflections – Accommodation
Having been a local to Coventry since I was old enough to get on a bus and travel, I’ve always been up to the city for nights out and vastly improved shopping compared to my little area. Upon visiting, I always saw a couple of student buildings and these names stuck with me, the main one being Priory Hall. When given my accommodation choices I noticed Priory was cheap, close to town, and catered, which allowed me to not burn my room down on a daily basis. Logically, I chose Priory as my place to live.
This was the worst choice I have so far made at university.
Rooms are hotel standard at best; the small internet cable plug in the wall is the only item in the room made after 2000, and most other items are getting on for being antiques or museum artefacts. I can live with this, it’s a blank canvas for my own creative styles, and as such it’s now filled with a plethora of random student objects, canvases and art. So far so good. The problem I found was the lies in the brochure. ‘Each block will have a kitchenette’ translated into a tiny room per twelve people with a microwave (now stolen twice) and a fridge (unguarded, constantly stolen from, never used since term one). ‘Our many communal rooms’ also translated into two rooms with seats and a TV. One placed wonderfully on the lower ground, is freezing cold and has one TV that seemingly only plays Sky Sports News, and a TV lounge on the fifth floor that is locked as soon as the sky gets dark, due to the walls being paper thin and any kind of sound being instantly silenced by the mufflers that are the incredibly picky security guards.
Which leads to the next point, security. We were assured security would be there to stop thieves, thugs and other problems from entering our home. This, sadly, is not true. Since August, I myself have walked into my room to find three guys wishing to ‘knock me out and rip my piercings from my face’ simply because I live near to a girl. I’ve watched a middle aged man walk into my room because he was ‘maintainance’, claim he was lost and walk back out to try to open other doors. Security, it seems, only seem to stop people such as friends who wish to get changed before going out with us, girlfriends and boyfriends, or other such terrorist acts they see fit. Equally, problems have occurred with problematic neighbors, a sure thing when living with 700 other random people. One guy admitted to taking Ketamine, and was crawling the floors removing lightbulbs. He recieved no warning. Another guy was throwing water bombs and eggs out of windows, quite blatantly. This resulted in my door being near kicked down, my girlfriend being demanded to leave, and questioning on it simply because my window was the only window nearby which was open. Their ‘sources’ then went on to name two other doors, one of whom had been out all day, the other being entirely unoccupied. With letters of complaint and on the spot warnings for activities such as having a door open (A sign of wishing to socialise, since we have no social room), owning a guitar which is not used, playing with a laser pen, putting up a joke poster, knocking something over, or smoking, security only seem to be here to keep us in, not anyone else out.
With endless drama, no security and no social rooms, this building has been the key problem in why my first year has been bordering on disastrous. From random meetings about nothing one day before an exam, to drugged up and mentally unstable people living on my doorstep, it’s an impossible place to work, concentrate, or enjoy anything.
Oh, and the lifts don’t work and the walls are falling apart, brilliantly played Coventry University.
