Graduate Housing in Mezzeh is part of the Damascus University student housing complex, designated for postgraduate students (master’s and PhD) coming from outside Damascus, and affiliated with the Mezzeh university complex.
Despite talk of improving university housing and the services provided to students, residents of the Graduate Housing continue to face mounting service problems, amid a growing sense that it receives less attention than other nearby complexes such as Mezzeh Housing, just a few meters away, and Al-Hamak (Mechanical Engineering). Students say the gap in services has become especially clear over the past year.
These complaints come at a time when university housing is supposed to provide a stable environment that helps students focus on their studies, not become a daily struggle with basic service crises that start with electricity and extend to the smallest details of everyday life.
Long Outages and Subsequent Improvement
For more than a year, the Graduate Housing suffered from near-constant electricity cuts, with power available for only a few hours a day, according to several students. At the same time, they say other housing complexes did not suffer from the same problem to the same extent, reinforcing their sense of inequality in the level of services.
For a long time, we only had electricity for a few hours a day. We had to study using the light from our phones or laptops if they were charged, and many times we had to go to the Mezzeh Housing library to study.
Mohammad Khaldoun – student in Graduate Housing
He added in remarks to Al-Hal Net: “The hardest part isn’t just the power cuts. It’s that other complexes are in much better shape, and that confirms they’re neglecting the Graduate Housing. Logically, there are only a few meters between us. They managed to fix the electricity situation in Mezzeh Housing, but they couldn’t fix it here in the Graduate Housing.”
In recent weeks, the electricity situation has improved noticeably, with supply hours increasing compared with before, following repeated student appeals and demands. This has eased some of the daily hardship they had endured for a long time.
After a full year of appeals, we got tired of complaining. Thank God, the situation now is better than before, and electricity is more stable, which has relieved one of the pressures on us.
Masoud Jabr – graduate student
Substandard Internal Services
Complaints do not stop at electricity. Students point to problems inside the residential units, especially bathrooms that repeatedly overflow. They add that most are not consistently fit for use and lack doors, in addition to the poor level of cleanliness in some shared kitchens.
One student told Al-Hal Net: “The bathrooms sometimes overflow and aren’t fit for use, and that has made life in the housing even harder. Every day we have to call the sanitation worker to fix them, and it takes a lot of connections just to get him to respond. We keep complaining about the bathrooms, but we get no response.”
He also pointed to the poor level of cleanliness in the shared kitchens inside the residential units, stressing that this creates additional pressure on students trying to maintain an acceptable living environment.
Honestly, many times we can’t even wash dishes because of the state of the kitchens. They’re always flooded and filthy. As for cleanliness, the workers just pass by superficially. The most important things in the housing are the bathroom and the kitchen, and both are in terrible condition. Even now, there are bathrooms without doors—how far has the neglect gone?
Oday Ghamid – graduate student
Students also point to the absence of shops inside the housing complex, except for a single supermarket, forcing them to go out to buy their daily necessities, which is exhausting under study pressure and during exam periods.
Meanwhile, Fares Ali, a graduate student, told Al-Hal Net: “Sometimes, if I need to buy vegetables or any simple item, I have to walk about 15 minutes to the nearest greengrocer in the Sheikh Saad area. Even if I just need one tomato, it turns into a whole trip. We asked the administration to open at least a vegetable shop, but so far there has been no response.”
No Official Clarification
As of the time this report was prepared, the housing administration had issued no official clarification regarding the reasons for the earlier decline in services or any future plans to address the problems, despite repeated student complaints.
A number of residents said they had submitted several requests calling for better services and equal treatment with the other housing complexes, but they received no clear responses about how the remaining problems would be comprehensively addressed.
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Despite the recent improvement in the electricity situation, students in the Graduate Housing are still demanding guarantees that this improvement will continue and that the rest of the service problems will be addressed. They say the issue is not just one detail, but the need for an integrated residential environment worthy of university students.
Between cautious relief after the improvement in electricity and continuing complaints about some services, the students’ demand remains clear: real equality in the level of attention across the different housing complexes, and a stable living environment that allows them to focus on their studies instead of being preoccupied with details that should have been resolved from the outset.
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