Dormitory
[2] In the UK, the word dormitory means a room (rather than a building) containing several beds accommodating unrelated people.
[3] This arrangement exists typically for pupils at boarding schools, travellers and military personnel, but is almost entirely unknown for university students.
A building providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people may also be called a house (members of a religious community or pupils at a boarding school[6]), hostel (students, workers or travelers) or barracks (military personnel).
The largest dormitory building in the US is said to be Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy,[8] housing 4,400 midshipmen in 1,700 multiple occupancy rooms.
In the United States, residence halls are sometimes segregated by sex, with men living in one group of rooms, and women in another.
For example, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana has a long history of parietals, or mixed visiting hours.
In the early 2000s, dorms that allowed people of opposite sexes to share a room became available in some public universities.
Until the mid 19th century, students at residential universities in England lived in colleges, where they rented a set of unfurnished rooms, paid their own servants, and bought their own meals.
This introduced three key concepts: rooms would be let furnished, all meals would be taken communally, and all expenses would be reasonable and fixed in advance, which combined to make the cost of accommodation in the hall much lower than in colleges.
Melville also introduced single room study-bedrooms and, in 1849, opened the first purpose-built hall of residence in the country at Hatfield.
William Whyte identifies four main drivers for the building of halls of residence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
These were: firstly, for philanthropic reasons (often linked to religion), such as the Anglican St Anselm Hall (1872/1907) and the Quaker Dalton Hall (1881), both at Owens College (now the University of Manchester); secondly, to provide safe accommodation for female undergraduates, who it was felt at that time could not live in lodgings; thirdly, to attract students from more distant parts of the country, particularly for university colleges in smaller urban areas such as Reading, Exeter and Leicester; and fourthly, because residential provision was becoming seen as an essential element of university life, allowing for the development of community.
[33] Private halls of residence, also known as purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA), are available in many university towns and cities.
[39] Some of the companies which have developed such accommodation are based offshore, which has led to concerns about tax avoidance and evasion of sanctions on Russian owners.
This has led University College London to remove their housing guarantee for incoming students and replace it with a system of priority groups.
Universities in Hong Kong are modeled on the British education system, with halls consequently being similar to those in the United Kingdom.
Sexual decency attitudes are laxer than in mainlander dorms, with males and females sharing the same buildings and sometimes corridors (though not rooms).
[51] The 33 Beekman Street tower at Pace University in New York, completed in 2015, is also claimed to be the worlds tallest college residence, at 104 metres (340 ft).
[52] Altus House in Leeds, UK, built in 2021, is described as the tallest student accommodation building in northern Europe at 116 metres (381 ft).
Where they exist, such individual councils are usually part of a larger organization called, variously, residence hall association, resident students' association, or junior common room committee which typically provides funds and oversees the individual building council.
Collectively, these hall councils plan social and educational events, and voice student needs to their respective administration.
Student staff members, Resident Assistants, or community advisers act as liaisons, counselors, mediators and policy enforcers.
Residence Halls may have housekeeping staff to maintain the cleanliness of common rooms including lobbies, corridors, lounges, and bathrooms.
Cold-air dorms get their names from the common practice of keeping the windows open year-round, even in winter.
The practice emerged based on the theory that circulation and cold air minimizes the spread of disease.
In some cases, dormitories in low-security prisons may almost resemble their academic counterparts, with the obvious differences of being locked at night, being administered by jailers, and subject to stricter institutional rules and fewer amenities.
In other institutions, dormitories may be large rooms, often converted from other purposes such as gymnasiums in response to overcrowding, in which hundreds of prisoners have bunks and lockers.
[60] The National Boarding Standards have prescribed a minimum floor area or living space required for each student and other aspects of basic facilities.
[60] A floating dormitory is a water-borne vessel that provides, as its primary function, living quarters for students enrolled at an educational institution.
Dormitory ships may also refer to vessels that provide water-borne housing in support of non-academic enterprises such as off-shore oil drilling operations.
