Following criticism of its decision to house students in Bunkabins, Murray Edwards has announced a new ‘build your own room’ scheme.
In a letter to students, the College President, Dame Emily Milton, explained that in response to complaints about the Bunkabins – portable temporary accommodation with no natural light or hot water – displaced students are instead being provided with their own building materials, some basic tools, and a plot of land in the college grounds.
Students are able to choose between different rent bands, ranging from ‘Standard’, which includes a bucket of animal dung and a few loose twigs for wattle and daub construction, to ‘Premium’, which offers a cartload of stone blocks and some cement.
The College has hit back at criticism of the scheme, saying in a statement: “The only problem here is a lack of initiative. Humans have successfully been constructing wattle and daub housing since the Neolithic period. It’s hardly a new idea.”
Medwards JCR Accommodation Officer Tabitha Forsyth-Karma, who herself lives in one of the ‘Premium’ rooms, is among those to have taken issue with the new scheme. “They put an envelope of wet cement in my pidge,” she protested in a social media post earlier this week. “Who does that?”
In a desperate bid to improve their own living standards, some Medwards students have resorted to desperate measures, taking it upon themselves to construct their own lodgings. TCS circulation is understood to have hit record numbers, with students needing large amounts of low-quality expendable paper in order to construct papier-maché homes.
Meanwhile, Tara Lamp, an HSPS student at the College, has managed to find a loophole in the new system.
“With 103 essays to complete in 8 weeks, I don’t have time to waste on DIY.
“Instead, I’ve declared myself to be a notable work of feminist art, and as such the college are now actually paying me to stay here in my capacity as an ‘interactive sculpture’.”