Hall 13 Woes

The Hall Of Residence 13 is the first stay for first-year undergraduate males at IITK since the year 2018. With an entirely new world awaiting students and a hall of residence entirely for the first-year male students being in place, the state of living conditions and the resident experience has been far from pleasant as per its current residents. Being homed amid the spread of litter and below-par drinking water facilities, regular HC visits, and trouble from mosquitoes; the added unresponsive authorities have left the Y22 boys reeling by the end of their first semester. Residents of the IITK campus frequently talk about the dormitories’ overcrowding, rising electricity costs, and crumbling ceilings in the old halls of IITK. However, the mismanagement inside Hall 13 is rarely brought up. At Vox, we decided to bring this up and floated a survey to gauge the opinions of Hall 13 residents.

Investigating the quality of potable water and also assessing feedback from our survey, we found that an wide majority of 65% of respondents found the water quality to be unsatisfactory. Analysing these responses block-wise, the proportion of students unsatisfied was much higher in blocks A, D, E and F. This comes as an expected consequence as blocks B and C had new RO systems installed in November last year. Assessing the water quality using a TDS meter ourselves in the hall, our team found the following results as of mid-January.

The investigation highlights how adequate potable drinking water sources are not just limited in number, but also scattered across the entire hall. This causes students to line up at a water cooler for longer durations and also travel across the hall for something as essential as drinking water. The numbers can also be contrasted with our last investigation on water quality across the campus which is linked here

Students also complained about high salt concentration in water supplied to the washrooms and raised concerns of several dermatological problems arising from this. Suggestions for the adoption of water softeners were also made. Apart from the water issue, complaints of a general lack of hygiene in and around the hall, including an ever-increasing garbage pile on the side lanes of the hall, found numerous mentions in the survey responses.

Hygiene in the messing facilities was also raised as a concern among the student residents. Problems like fly infestation, hair found in mess food and improperly cleaned utensils were pressing issues with the messing in Hall 13. Students also mentioned their dissatisfaction at the quality of food served in the mess and in particular were unhappy with the high prices of extras in the mess, claiming that the amount of food being served was not proportional to the price paid.

Presence of bugs and snakes within the hall premises was also a concern flagged across the survey responses. The presence of dogs, however was not posed as an issue, with around 81% residents being neutral or having no problem with the presence of dogs. Problems arose with toppling of garbage by dogs and further consequences like foul odour and spread of other diseases was highlighted.

Around 79% of students mentioned about having visited the Health Centre atleast once. Out of this, 44% mentioned that they had been to the HC on more than one instance. 72% students had fevers at least once through their stay, and while symptoms of COVID, Dengue and Chicken Pox were low, around 50% of the residents faced digestive disorders during some or the other part of their stay yet.

Regarding the number of washing machines in the hall, more than 60% of the students felt that it should be increased, and 22% were unsatisfied with the availability of warm water. On the brighter side, more than half of the students were satisfied with the availability of warm water in the hostel, and more than 85% of students didn’t face the problem of power cuts. Pingala complaints were addressed in time for the majority, though 16% of the respondents complained about delayed or no response.

Creation of a Hall Executive Committee for Hall 13 has been a long pending task, and the survey highlighted how 60% residents were in favour of having an HEC for the hall to enable student administration for the living conditions and facilities of the hall. The Senate and CoSHA had approved the formation of the HEC back in 2020-21, but pertaining to the pandemic, the implementation of the same was stalled. While news of elections for the HEC to be held around March are doing the rounds, conclusive updates are yet to be received.

The infrastructure crunch plaguing the campus currently has taken all shapes and forms, with the most recent Hall of Residence also facing concerns related to living conditions coming up. The necessity of having proper student accommodation gets highlighted with each passing week on campus, and having students take up responsibility to handle the facilities provided to them in the proper adept manner comes forward as a necessary step. With the end of the first semester for the Y22 undergraduates, the updates with their stay at Hall 13 are awaited upon their return to campus. Keep following us for more follow-ups on the issue!

Edited by: Utkarsh Agrawal
Written by: Aujasvit Datta, Pranav Agrawal, Harshit Sharma, Kaushal Jain, Pratham Sharma, Aadityaamlan Panda
Design by: Sachidanand Navik-