The following was published in The Anglophones (of Grenoble, France), November-December 2002:

Student Housing: A Tale of Two Cities

On a sunny, spring morning, I get off the bus on rue Aimé Pupin. Before me, a pane of glass from the bus shelter is missing. Fragments lie scattered on the ground like a pool of diamonds. Black graffiti has been scribbled on the shelter’s small bench— among it, the English “F” word.

A friend of mine, who prefers to remain anonymous for this article, calls to me from across the street. I walk over and shake his hand, and we set out on a tour of La Résidence Olympique, a complex of student dorms in the southeastern section of this, the ill-reputed Village Olympique.

The first thing you notice upon entering the area of La Résidence Olympique is that, far from having the air of a run-down, inner-city housing project, it resembles a college campus in American suburbia. Concrete paths wind through hilly lawns dotted with dandelions. Some dozen buildings of perhaps four or five stories are staggered on the grounds, the scattered trees between them casting shade. A man rides by on a bike.

But then there are the signs that you are in a 34-year-old housing development that has long outlived its heyday of hosting athletes participating in the 1968 Winter Olympics. A stray Carrefour shopping cart has been left on a path. Garbage litters part of the ground. Balconies with dark brown fences and the occasional pot of flowers are used to dry clothes or store bikes or support satellite dishes.

We pass through a gate and come upon a sign reading, “Closed from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.” “It’s a lie,” says my friend. “The doors are always open.” He shows me his electromagnetic pass key, which he keeps on his key ring but never uses.

At Autrichien, one of 11 dorms named after countries participating in the 1968 Games, my friend opens the front door with a metal key (the electronic keypad next to it doesn’t work). We come into a lobby with off-white walls, a public phone, and a scratched, wooden notice board. The board lists dining hall hours and rooms having mail alongside posters that advertise international phone cards and talk about contraception.

The small, windowless communal kitchen on the second floor has no fans or vents, and paint on the ceiling has started to peel. Aside from a sink, two electric burners operated on timers are the only appliances.

“This is an average day,” remarks my friend, bits of orange peel by our feet. “It’s not too bad. Usually, they splash food on the wall.”

Down the hall, one of two toilets for the sixteen residents on the floor has no seat, and there is no toilet paper, let alone a dispenser for any. A large cobweb stretches between a pipe and the wall. A hand-made sign posted with brown duct tape reads, “Flush the toilet, pigs. Respect the cleaning women. At your age, I wonder why I’m reminding you of this. Signed: a resident.”

Inside his nine-square-meter room, white walls meet a cream-colored ceiling. He painted two of the walls. “I said, ‘I don’t live here like that.’”

“A lot of students do it,” he adds.

A stretch of wall and a tall cabinet partially cordon off a corner sink. The thin curtain with the countryside theme at the window is his. He has no personal phone. No one in the building does. The table has a horizontal bar that digs into his shins, making him cramped when he sits to type at his computer. Because his window faces north, he doesn’t get direct sunlight; light from a bulb sticking out of the painted wall is checked by dark-wood panels opposite it.

“Students are not asking for too much,” says my friend, who is not French, after we’ve finished dinner in his room. “They just ask for painted walls, clean and ready-to-use toilets, good showers (…) regulated heat of water (…) This is what I ask. It’s not too much.”

He goes on. “You know, if you look to CROUS catalog for residences, normally, here you have security, a bicycle park on every building or something like that, a place to wash clothes (…) and study rooms and…” He pauses. “I didn’t see any of [those]. Any.”

•

The French government runs 17 student dorms in the Grenoble metropolitan area, according to the 2002 back-to-school edition of “Carnet de Route de Grenoble à l’Université.” They come under the auspices of CROUS, the Regional Center for University and School Works, a government agency which, officially stated, serves to “improve the quality of life and work for students of higher-education establishments.”

Spread mostly between the city of Grenoble and its campus, in suburban Saint Martin d’Hères and Gières, the dorms fall into one of two categories, traditional and new. The former comprise mostly nine-square-meter rooms and have shared toilets, showers, and kitchens; the latter, more modern, have studios and one-bedroom apartments of at least 12 square meters, with private toilets and showers, and shared or private cooking facilities. Price ranges reflect the difference: 123.48 to 164.64 euros versus 173.07 to 318.77 euros, according to the booklet.

Marie-France Vullierme is the director of La Résidence Olympique. She oversees the eleven dorms that have a collective capacity of 783 beds in a real-estate-strapped metropolitan area that, according to the tourism office, counts more than 50,000 higher-education students.

I talked with her in September about my visit in the spring.

“As far as the gates go, it’s true that that’s going to be done. But the current system doesn’t work,” she says bluntly. “The company is supposed to come at the end of the month (…) to do the work.”

“As far as the bathrooms go,” she goes on, “we don’t put out seats for hygiene reasons. That’s a directive. (…) Each student could bring his or her own seat.”

“And it’s true that there is no toilet paper. (…) As soon as we’d put out rolls, there’d be someone taking them.”

Maintenance of the grounds?

“Listen, above all, I think it’s a question of students. (…) The students have to be clean.

”There’s usually someone who does it, but currently, that person is on vacation. But all last year, someone would clean the lawn every day, every other day.

“The problem is that the students aren’t responsible— aren’t clean.”

She pauses.

“Not all.”

•

On a Saturday night in September, I find myself trodding up a path lined with roses to La Résidence Taillées, a so-called new dorm on the campus. I pass through sliding glass doors and go up to the fourth and top floor, where I walk beneath slanted sunlights and over a short, metal-grating catwalk through which you can see down to the first floor.

My friend greets me with a smile.

His new place has a common area with white walls and dirty, baby-blue drapes; a kitchenette; and a table with plenty of legroom. (He left the curtain in his old room for the next tenant.) The bedroom has two corner windows, one of which looks out onto the Bastille. He has a phone and his own bathroom with shower. Aside from the tram’s occasionally passing, he hears no noise.

For all this, he’s taken a rent hike from approximately 80 euros a month to around 150, with financial aid.

“Last year,” he says, “all I could think is: finish my job and leave the country.”

As for where he is now, “This gives me the intention to be in France— to be in Grenoble, at least, ’cause I really feel home. ◼