Over the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of heat surrounding the development of the new dorms in Jinqiao (金桥), Pudong (浦东). There has been an overwhelming sense of frustration from within the student body about the lack of transparency regarding these issues. Although facilities promised 'suite-style apartments' to students, this no longer appears to be the case. A student who wishes to be anonymous commented, "my main issue with this whole process has been the lack of communication. For months we didn't receive any information, and the first time the new dorms were really even acknowledged, the facts were funneled through just a few select students before reaching everyone else in the form of scuttlebutt and speculation. Regardless of what happened or didn't happen in the design and budgeting process, I would have liked to have been filled in just a bit along the way.” While some information is still unclear, there has been some response to students grievances. An email sent by Charlene Visconti and David Pe entitled ‘Housing Update #1’ was the first explicit information made available to students and clarified a few of the challenges. They highlighted that “with the need to house a growing student body, we were limited to our choices". However, maintained that JinQiao emerged to be the perfect decision as it was “centrally located and provided access to public transportation, an international shopping complex, and an overall vibrant and welcoming community.” As for the actual design of the building, here is what has been clarified:

BUILDINGS

The Jinqiao (金桥) complex consists of 10 towers and NYU Shanghai is renting three towers. Dean Visconti's email confirmed that NYU “could not alter the building exterior, but had some flexibility with the interior.”

DORM LAYOUT

The motivation for a lot of the decisions based on interior space seem to be motivated by the need to accommodate a large number of students, “1000+, at minimum.” So the original layout of the building of 2 Bedroom/2 Bath or 3 Bedroom/2 Bath apartments was always going to have to be changed. The solution is then to “convert the living room and dining area to individual bedrooms. Turn the kitchens also into bathrooms.”

FLOOR PLAN

Blueprints detailing the arrangements of two floor plans were also released with the email. They show that “all bathrooms, kitchen and laundries be part of the common space. Essentially, the space is one large 8 bedroom apartment.” It was confirmed that “each floor has 5 bathrooms, 1 kitchen (with the exceptions of 3 floors that we needed to use that space for the internet servers), and laundry units every other floor (2015-16).” For next year the plan is to limit each floor to 16 students with mostly doubles and limited triples, but obviously that will only be a short term luxury.

SINGLE-SEX vs. MIXED-SEX FLOORS

One of the decisions that has received the most backlash from students is the decision to have single-sex floors. The email stated “the driving decision related to creating single-sex floors was to provide as much privacy for individuals as possible.” This is due to the dependence on common space and the fact that bathrooms will not be allocated (sinks will be built outside the bathrooms, but will still be in the hallway). However a lot of students are unhappy with this, referencing issues regarding gender polarity, in that it is unfair to students who do not define themselves as a single gender, to transgender students and also to those who may consider themselves as either male or female, but do not support the notion of a binary gender system. The outcome of the conflict was a poll asking for student input, to choose between single-sex floors or mixed-sex floors. Both would allow residents equal access to common spaces, but mixed-sex floors “might result in a slightly larger resident to bathroom ratio.” Results of the poll are yet to be announced. What wasn’t officially mentioned in the email was that the owners of the building may not be okay with a gender-neutral policy. Obviously NYU Shanghai will want to have a good relationship with the Landlord, and so there may be more to the issue than the bathroom ratio.

GYM

Apparently NYU’s original request was to “Take the first floor, open up the interior walls, and build one apartment as the kitchen, one apartment as the fitness center, and one apartment to act as common space and laundry,” but this was denied as the “structural walls needed to remain intact.” The resultant solution is to provide a kitchen and laundry space on each floor, but this also means that a fitness centre will have to be built in the Academic Building. Although this will allow the centre to be bigger and shower facilities have been promised, some students are apprehensive about the distance away from the dorms. Others mentioned the detrimental impact of having all facilities housed in one building, as it would mean many students would be forced to spend 12+ hours per day under one roof. Through social media and a Google Doc, students' wishes and concerns have been rallied together and more information has been provided, in addition to the email:

SUITE-STYLE APARTMENTS

The problem with the promise of ‘suite-style apartments’ appears to be grounded in interpretation. Residential Life is maintaining that the apartments will be suite-style as rooms will be grouped around a common living room, kitchen, and bathrooms. But this perhaps is not what some people had in mind when they imagined what suite-style would entail. Their ambiguous definition could be deemed a little convenient on their end. This article was written by Stephanie Bailey. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: NYUSH Student Life