The Cambridge Chat Thread - it's over 90,000!

College accommodation is so mental
I don't understand why they're so anal about it. Or why students couldn't just group together and force them to give us ordinary facilities like students in other Universities get.

In regards to the limited cooking facilities, they have the standard excuse that they want everyone to eat in hall to "foster a community spirit across the college" (or something to that sentiment).

I always thought the fire hazard was the main reason.

Fire hazards are the reason as far as I know, but at Emma there's no attempt to work around it really, and a lot of the combi ovens have been replaced with microwaves, which there seems to be absolutely no reason for other than cost.

I think it's partly that the people in charge just don't think about the totality of kitchen facilities and what you can actually cook with access to only a microwave, and there's also an assumption that if you live in college you'll eat in hall for the majority of the time. That's a dangerous assumption because hall food is very restrictive for anybody vegetarian or with dietary requirements, and it would extremely unhealthy for me to eat there for all of my meals. My timetable also doesn't work with that - last term when I was doing evening rehearsals for my play I physically couldn't get to hall, and I would come home anywhere between 10 and midnight and have to go to my boyfriend's house to make my dinner.

It just adds this extra element of irritation to my day because there's no pleasure in eating if my diet is this restricted. I often have sandwiches for dinner because I can't face pasta or baked beans again. If I want to cook properly, or even just have a supermarket pizza or a Chinese ready meal I have to go somewhere else. I can't cook meat at all. Microwaveable food only makes up a very small portion of the supermarket, and it's surprising how many of the ready meals aren't microwaveable either. It's not like there's even another kitchen in my building that I could go to, as we all have our own little kitchens in our rooms. I have to walk to the other side of college and get a friend to let me in if I want to cook anything reasonable. I don't think it's a malicious oversight on the part of college, but I think there is an element of them not really being willing to sit down and say 'okay, how can we enable our students to feed themselves?'. Emma is really really good at looking after its students, but it does sometimes feel like they don't really let us look after ourselves. I think that's partly just me having come back from living completely on my own on my year abroad and having to adapt to the restrictions of college life though.

I thought most colleges do!?

I thought most colleges do!?

Well exactly, I'm surprised that there's so much grief.

Downing definitely do, we have hobs and ovens in most staircases - this year I've only got hotplates, but we're a tiny staircase and definitely in the minority. My house next year has two ovens (with 8 hobs) shared between 10 of us. It even has a proper table!

My (admittedly limited to only a few unis) experience is that that's true of self-catered halls, but catered halls are less likely to be like that. That was the distinction I was trying to make. I mean, I certainly view living in college as catered, so it makes sense, but it doesn't make sense in college houses, hence why I mentioned them above.

Today is my 8th TSR birthday.

This thread has also been going for over 8 years now...

Edit I know my Join Date says Sept 07 but this is my second account.

I said I thought that most colleges have proper kitchens. I don't know who's at what college, so for all I know that discussion was centered around two or three colleges.