MALES & FEMALES MUST STAY IN ONE RESIDENCE By: Pedro Mzileni 22-May-2014 The discussion in the Department of Student Housing at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) is whether or not males and females should stay in one residence or must the genders be kept separate like how it is currently. Let me join this vertical discussion as well briefly. Firstly, before we even go to the question of gender – let us start with the architecture of these residences and their history. How, in the first place, did we find ourselves staying in residences of this nature and arrangement? Residences in universities are built into floors and room numbers close to each other solely because of lack of space, the high demand for them and the profitability behind the plan. The mission by a university is to accommodate as many students as possible under the most efficient space as possible. This type of architectural arrangement makes a lot of economic sense to the university. What you find in this type of a residence is the mass sharing of resources in it. There is sharing of the television, rooms, showers and even privacy. There is high concentration on rules, security and maintenance. The issue of saying “I want to walk down the passage as a woman comfortably” doesn’t come solely from the matter of privacy but its root is the architectural arrangement that I have articulated above and the pecks that come with it. Secondly, division of these residences into males and females is European and colonial in nature not African and democratic. If you look at European high schools in South Africa built in the 1800s across all major cities – they are divided into males and females in two different schools. In Grahamstown you have Graeme College and Victoria Girls High School. In King William’s Town you have Kingsridge High School and Dale College but to name a few. Historically, there was a different type of an education offered to male schools compared to female schools even amongst white people. This was their own segregation according to gender. In society, the segregation was primarily based on race, class and gender. The separation of residences in universities built by Europeans (all are built by them) is basically the continuity and extension of that European gender division beyond high schools and hostels into residences in a “university environment”. Unmasking Europeanism out of the current system of residences you will begin to notice a different paradigm. In an ideal university where perhaps one could say space and resources are available. Students would not be staying in a residence of more than 5 people to begin with. To imagine that we have residences today accommodating more than 300 students is frightening. A normal residence for students in an ideal university is supposed to be a housing unit (or rather a commune) accommodating only 4 students. This is already the case in the Post-Graduate Village and the new Protea residence at NMMU and arguably the post-graduate village of Rhodes University as well. In a village, houses will be scattered around each other which each accommodating 4 students with all resources available in it. This is how houses normally look like in society. With the university being a microcosm of society, staying in house units of this nature will best suite the accommodation of both females and males. Myself, like any other student, I come from a house that has 5 members (3 males and 2 females) and there are no gender problems amongst each other. A house unit will convey likewise. Perhaps the myth that we need to dismiss completely in this debate is the thinking that people who come to university in general and 1st years in particular were not existing human beings for over 18 years of their lives in society before they all came to university. Human beings from both genders know very well how to behave amongst each other when they stay together. In fact, the normal approach of Africans in such a house unit arrangement of 4 people is that they end up forming a family amongst each other. Research and figures are there to see. The argument of what will happen when males and females stay together in the residence of 300 rooms were mass sharing is a prerequisite no longer belongs to moral reasoning but to the architectural texture that fumes and informs any reasoning out of it – be it moral or not. With those few words, I say let us finally decolonize our universities’ architecture and social arrangement into an ideal microcosm of society where all exist in an environment not divided according to race, class and gender. An environment were people interact 24/7 as females and males in their communities, places of work and families Pedro Mzileni is the Secretary General of Xanadu Residence, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 12:37:29 +0000
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