MAD QUEUE DISEASE?
MAD QUEUE DISEASE?
Norwegians are world champions in queueing. Even before the biggest party nights, where the Aud.Max. entrance turns into a lively sea of people, we stay obediently in our place. We are probably among the top 1% of queuers. We are still beaten by one group of people: the ones waiting for accommodation from SiÅs.
Journalist: Åsmund Godal
Fotograf: Even Amandus Haslund
Translator: Eva Weston Szemes
Web distributør: Martha Ingeborg Evensen
By September 1st, 200 students were still in this queue. These people are forced to either commute, move into SiÅs’ infamous basement dormitory or, worst case; quit studying. Why haven’t SiÅs made sure there is enough space for everyone?
To find some answers, Tuntreet finds their way to the office of the SiÅs director. Here, we find a happy, talkative Pål Magnus Løken, who tells us that 36.7% of students live in SiÅs accommodation. The goal is reaching 40%.
But why are we not there already? Doesn’t SiÅs have a dialogue with NMBU about the number of students? Pål Magnus says that the university cannot accurately predict the number of applicants or the funding from the government. The number of students in the future is not something they fully know, but you have to assume it will increase. He also points out that the student welfare organisation plays an important role in reducing the average price of rent in the private market. If more people could live in SiÅs accommodation, private landlords would have to lower their price. More SiÅs housing would be good both for students’ economy and the welfare of Ås students.
It seems we all agree we need more housing. But does SiÅs have any concrete plans on the table? “Yes”, says Pål Magnus. “We are working on a zoning plan for new construction and full rehabilitation of the buildings on Pentagon, which can give us a total of 550 new dormitory units.” If the building permit is granted, the new building can be ready in spring 2026, and the buildings from the 70s can be fully rehabilitated by 2028. With this, SiÅs will have a total of 2900 dormitory units, enough for well over 40% of students.
SIÅS HOUSING WAITING LIST, SEPTEMBER 1ST:
It is tempting to dream away thinking about these visions of the future. But we must not forget our 200 homeless fellow students. SiÅs has offered them a temporary dormitory in the basement of Kajaveien 15. About 30 people have taken advantage of this offer, and out of these, only two remain when we pop by for a chat.
At the dormitory:
The first thing we see is a kitchen with a stove, a few tables and a pile of rubbish by the door. Further in, the hall is packed with bunk beds, a few small sofas, and not much more, really. Anders and Waffa (real name Mohammed, but nobody calls him that) sit down in the sofas, seemingly in a good mood. They now have permanent accommodation but have come back to talk to us. We ask them how it has been to live like this. Anders elaborates:
“For me, it has been a lot of fun, because it has been so…” “Social!”, Waffa interrupts. “Now I have a room at Pentagon, and there, you rarely meet others from the collective. Here, we spent a lot more time together.” Anders agrees regarding his own collective. “I have tried starting conversations, singalongs, offered them tea, coffee, tried to start something with those people, but they are not a very social bunch.”
That was not the case in the dormitory. “Here, we had debates and discussions almost every day. I think we discussed art for five hours”, says Waffa. Anders supplements with “Yes, and a discussion about inclusion in professional sports, about transgender people and so on. So, there has been a lot of different things.”
But it was not all fun and games in the dormitory either. Anders tells us that the only privacy you got was your own bed. People would put up duvets or make a fort so that you could not see. “Other than that, you were only left alone in the loo and the bathroom.”
The cleaning was only so-so. “There could be a slice of pizza left on the table for five days and we all just went: who owns that? And then nobody touched it,” says Anders. Waffa elaborates: “There was a burnt piece of chicken in the oven that…” “…that was mine!” Anders interrupts. “Yes, I cooked it and told the others I would clean it up. But then I couldn’t find it, and someone put it back in the oven. It was there for a really long time.”
We ask what the lads have to pay. “Nada,” says Waffa. “In theory 100 NOK per day, but when I talked to the lady at Boksmia… She said they were going to send the bill later.” Anders thinks 100 NOK per day is a really good price, and remarks that this adds up to about 3000 NOK per month. When Anders tells people where he lives, people react with “poor you”. To this, Anders usually responds with a proud “NO!” followed by a monologue about the fact that there is more than one side to it.
When we ask them what they think about the fact that the market for student housing in Ås is that crazy, Waffa says he thinks it’s strange that NMBU accepts space for more students than SiÅs can provide housing for. He also thinks that SiÅs needs to advertise more for the dormitory. “They present it as if it’s the worst last resort ever. OK, it might be the worst in the area, but it’s not like there are rats in the walls.” “Ish,” says Anders. “I had a frog jumping into my bed once.” “And the mice are talking to each other inside the walls,” Waffa adds. Finally, Anders mentions that he thinks no other student housing has a sewage pipe going straight through the living room. “You can really hear it when people use the loo. Swoosh!”
We’ve heard enough and thank them for their time. But what about the other people in the queue? Where do they live, and why not in the basement? Tuntreet tracked down one of them, Gerhard Sørensen Fuglem, who is currently without housing after a breakup from a couples flat. Since the start of the semester, he has been living from collective to collective, borrowing “a sofa here and a bed there” at his mates’ places.
That’s how Gerhard has become very familiar with the idiom “clean home, clean mind”. “I really need to watch my calendar, to make sure everything works out. It’s a lot of organising to make sure I have a roof over my head.” He sighs when we ask what he thinks about living like this further into the autumn. “It’s not optimal. You get more and more desperate and end up just picking the first and best option. Either something incredibly expensive close by, or something more affordable further away.”
Even though he is a social lad, Gerhard also appreciates his alone time. With his current situation, there is not much time for that. When we ask him whether he has considered the basement in Kajaveien 15, he says he thinks a sofa is good enough for now, especially when he is blessed with his mates opening their homes.
It’s probably worse for the ones who don’t have such friends. We got in touch with the leader of The Executive Committee, Wilhelm Anthun to get the Students Parliament’s view on this. “The Student Parliament wants more student housing. SiÅs wants to build more, so this is not a battle for us. If there is one thing we are unsatisfied with, it is the lack of long-term thinking.” Wilhelm uses Kilehagen as an example of horror, where NMBU sold the property in the 80s, believing the academy would never have more than 1000 students. This has resulted in a lot of conflict. “Lastly, I want to give two big thumbs up to SiÅs. They want more student housing, and they want it quickly,” Wilhelm concludes.
It seems people have generally found solutions that work. We really hope nobody has had to cancel their study plans because of lack of housing, and that SiÅs gets the building process sped up. Before the reader continues, Tuntreet would like to announce a suggestion: Let’s gather outside the fence when the excavators arrive at Pentagon, and cheer continually. Maybe they will finish in 2027 already, and the queue for housing disappears before Anders has had time to say “Swoosh!”
