Homeless in the exam season

A group of female students has been chased off the house they were renting by a ruthless landlady and as im writing this article they are homeless.

The incident happened after the students complained of the unfair treatment they were getting in terms of rentals and living conditions. 

The landlady who is full of herself could not understand the tears of the girls and continued toughening the terms of stay which forced to report the matter to the SRC.

A member from the SRC visited the place to with the intention of talking and knock some sense into the landlady's head but it turned that she doesn't even have a heart...'maybe she gave it to someone else in return for some cash'.

This whole incident led into an exchange of words between the students and the house owner and eventually she dismissed them without notice.

It is an exam month and as concerned students we expect each one of us to be in a conducive environment so as to prepare for exams without any obstacle. 

Now where would they get the time to look for another place to rent when they are busy with their exams. It means that they will have to just find somewhere to put a head for a night and work up in the morning...;we cant call that a sleep.

They are now living like refugees or maybe squatters as if they don't have homes in their mother towns; that's one thing these landlords forget to remember. They think we are staying at their places because we are suffering, yet in actual facts we are suffering because we are staying at their places

What kind of a person would dismiss tenants who are in such a scenario...well i guess its all about greedy and selfishness. 

All we need is an uprising, dont you think so?

Rent issues topical again

We are now in the last month of the semester before we close our academic year and the rent issue with landlords is topical again.

for such a house, they need
 more money

Landlords know for sure that for the next four months they wont be getting any rand from their rooms and now they want to capitalist on the poor students.

A lot of the landlords in areas surrounding NUST have hiked their rents for the month of May. This has in turn resulted in many students failing to raise the needed amount and are now on eviction without notice.

For those who will be coming back next academic year, landlords have implemented a rule that for anyone to guarantee his/her accommodation, they should pay rent in full every month during the vacation.

For that reason again, students have decided to check out at the end of the semester as they always do...but this is also a grantee of accommodation crisis when they come back.

Quite frankly how can I pay rent for a room that i'm not using.

These landlords are going too far. I think something should be done about this. There should be a constitution to guide these people's operations...come on SRC...do something 

Internet access still a challenge

Internet access is still a challenge at the National University of Science and Technology and yet we need it day in day out to advance science and technology in Zimbabwe.

We only have a few of these transmitters at NUST

With the growth of the digital age, Internet use is becoming more and more necessary by the rise of another day and every student should have full access to the service.

Contrary to that, only a few corners at the institution are covered with wi-fi network  and again in the odd hours of the day; only a few students access it.

Cable network is only available in less than five ports the whole compass and the rest have 'never been serviced ever since they where installed' ... they are not working

Researching online is such a challenge under such circumstances and students are forced to visit Internet cafes and pay $1 per hour after paying hundreds of dollars as their academic fees.

Part four students are doing their projects and they need full access to the net but it is a rare resource. The library is poorly equipped with literature and we need books from the web.

The faculty of Communication and Information Science has courses which rely basically on online services and Internet access is a pre-requisite. Its non availability is posing a tremendous challenge to the flow of academia.

 Even the computer labs are not fully equipped with Internet access; I wonder how they want us to operate in this digital age where everything is happening on the world wide web.

In other cases, cable network and wi-fi are found where there is no power access and yet due to the hard work we give to our laptops, batteries are now almost off.

But still, they don't even care about us...

Heat under sufferer's feet

For how long shall NUST students rely on rented places for their accommodation  Life is not easy for us at all and given better conditions i'm sure w can produce better results.

Working up in a small room with tiny windows and rarely any ventilation, I wonder how if this is the way that it should be in the life of a UBA.

Landlords are overcharging us and we are overcrowded in those matchboxes which don't even have shelves to put my stuff.

Woke up around 3am with the intention to study buy what put me off is the fact that there are no reading desks. It was only an hour later after a loved one called on my phone that I started reading leaning against the wall but still i was forcing matters.

This lasted only for an hour before I decided on going to compass walking across the dark and smiling to the cold. 

Well is this going to change? The more they say things are gonna change, the more they get worse. My belly is almost empty because the landlord ripped me off all the bucks and yet still in need 10 rand daily if ever i'm to visit the library.

My safety as a student is at risk since i have to walk to and from the school for studies if ever i'm to produce better results.

Don't we think all this was gonna be eliminated if the varsity was to accommodate majority of the students?...Well, I don't know...all I know is i'm suffering for for years in university custody.

Academia has been always painful and we expected that when we came, so why again is more heat applied to my feet. Eish ...all I see is double trouble, more pain and more suffering in the life of a university student. 

Vandalism of public property; a cause of concern

Vandalism of public property is continuously spreading all over our country and yet we keep on complaining of shortage thereof.

Call boxes are no-longer in existence

Vandalised bus stop sheds 

It is not a new phenomenon yes; it started long back but we should not keep on praising it simply because those who came before us have been doing it.

All bus stops used to have sheds where we could shelter ourselves in hot summer or in the rainy seasons. 

All this is history after we took them to construct our foul runs.

I personally have seen a metal bath tub at a certain home that has the give way sign. Someone plucked it off the road and decided to make tubs for his children. What a shame.

All highways used to have barbed wire fence along them to avoid livestock and other animals from entering the roads; we stole them and fenced our gardens. Now we are heading our cattle on the roads.

Come-on folks, this is our property. We need it in our daily lives.

But well...i think someone is not doing his/her job properly.

From potholes to tubholes

That's no-longer a pothole...its now a tub-hole

The next thing all this part will be off and we still call it a tared road

And when it rains...

Our roads are full of of injuries that can not deserve the pothole title but a tub-hole attribute. These potholes are continuously increasing without anyone giving a 'damn' about them.

Most of the roads in our 'ghettos' are now worse that gravel ones and yet we still call them tared roads.

Drivers have resorted to creating new roads on what used to be pedestrians' dusty pavements because they cant stand these 'tub-holes anymore.

Traditionally, we used to know that if a pedestrian wants to avoid cars, he/she will walk on the roadsides; to date that have since changed and to avoid traffic, a pedestrian needs to walk right on the 'tared' road since drivers now follow the roadsides.

if you have to keep your car intact, it means you have to be late for work everyday trying to avoid the unavoidable potholes.

It is only a combie driver who just run over these potholes ...not because his vehicle is strong but because its not his so he don't even care.

I think the city council needs some counselling

Gamer Addiction in college life...comeon guys lets fight it

A 19 year old freshman male walks into your office looking disheveled, lacking personal hygiene, with red eyes, and has lost weight. The student avoids eye contact, seems uncomfortable, angry, and anxious to leave your office. The academic report on your desk shows that he is frequently absent, falls asleep in class, and his assignments are late or nonexistent. During the interview, you learn the student has few friends, procrastinates, isolates himself in his room, has carpel tunnel syndrome, eats irregularly, sleeps two hours each night, has migraines and backaches.

A 40 year old senior female wants help studying for the GRE exam she is taking - tomorrow. Procrastination is a pattern with this student. Although her GPA and ACT are high, she admits to exhaustion because she sleeps two or three hours each night and lives on chocolate and caffeine. Assignments are turned in on time but only after pulling several 'all nighters.'

What do these two students have in common? Insights garnered from answers to your questions lead you to believe that the source of both problems is overuse of the internet and the playing of computer or video games: Gamer Addiction.

WHAT IS GAMER ADDICTION?

Gamer Addiction is an obsession with video game playing that usually begins in elementary and middle school. By college, the individual progresses from simple to elaborate games and the student is game-hooked. An activity becomes an addiction when it is used to change an individual's mood. It becomes abuse when it interferes with 'one's work or school, or disrupts personal or family relationships, and becomes increasingly necessary to feel good' (Orzack, 2005a, p. 1).

Addiction takes away from life and reduces motivation to do anything beyond the focus of the addiction (IGDA panel). Niolosi (2002) found that video games are part of the daily routine for 65% of American girls and 85% of American boys. NBC News ( 5-19-05 ) reported that one in eight gamers develops patterns similar to other types of addiction and abuse. Tournemillie (2002) noted that a survey of 1500 teenagers indicated 25% were compulsive video gamers. Fifty per cent of those surveyed used the word 'addiction' to describe a friend's gaming behaviors.

Today's video games are available in a plethora of venues that draw individuals into the world of the game. Games are designed to keep the player riveted to action. Players experience a sense of control when they enter into the fantasy world of speed, realism, violence, new morals, and interoperability. Many games offer on-line anonymous interaction with other people; a 'hook' is a sense of family or belonging in the form of a pseudo persona the player develops when repeatedly playing the game. The longer the game is played, the more the pseudo persona can replace reality.