Cut the Condescension: Tales from Geneva’s Student Housing Woes

By a Current Picciotto Resident

When I decided to make the choice to move to Geneva, I of course expected to encounter many cultural differences between my home in the U.S. and life here. I did not anticipate encountering the tendency to not treat students as adults, the unwillingness to accept responsibility, and repeated interactions between students and administration that create feelings of dehumanization. 

Repeatedly, our rights as paying tenants have been infringed upon. This March, the residence took away cleaning supplies available in the building, leaving just two vacuums for the entire residence. Ironically, when an email alert went out in April about bed bugs in an apartment, the administration’s response included tips for keeping apartments regularly clean in between the official cleanings. I bitterly laughed, wondering how they expected us to do this with just two vacuums, one of which I had just brought to my apartment, plugged in, and promptly found it no longer worked. Down to one now, I guess. 

GM residents are wondering why they have to pay 20 francs for a sheet set that is included in their rent anyway, or why the administration can’t handle things on a case-by-case basis. (“Oh, you used your own sheets this week and the cleaners didn’t provide you with a new GM set… I’m sorry, here you go,” takes 30 seconds to say… maybe a bit longer in French.) I wondered if I was expecting too much (though I am paying twice as much rent than I paid in Los Angeles), but friends living in other student residences in Geneva confirmed they receive regular cleaning with no problems, for even cheaper rent. 

For those who live in Picciotto, this February’s heating breakdown is an event we won’t forget—many were concerned for their health as temperatures dropped at night, especially those with young children in the building. I found myself having to leave my house to get schoolwork done, unable to focus as I shivered at home. Our residence group chat continuously buzzed with ideas of how to fight the administration for a rent reduction (which shouldn’t need to be a “fight” anyways—if our rent includes heat, why did we have to pay for a service we didn’t receive for 3 weeks?). The administration failed to accept responsibility for the conditions, repeatedly citing that the “maintenance team” (rarely to be seen in person by residents) was taking necessary actions to resolve it, and that really the “external company” was in charge of the issue. 

I’ve heard countless stories from peers about both housing and academic issues which have left me feeling like the administration does not care to treat individuals as independent adults. There is rarely any room to take individual accounts into consideration. Rather, policy is policy and if it doesn’t fall under their job description, don’t bother asking for help. Even the cafeteria’s recent confiscation of cutlery made me question whether they think we’re in kindergarten or we’re full-grown adults. Problems here are handled not in the best way to provide for those paying to be here or to help in extraneous circumstances. Instead, problems are resolved in a manner that protects those who run the place while continuously condescending residents. While of course, I don’t expect the American notion of “the customer is always right” to spread this far, in a city that supposedly exists to conceptualize and implement global humanitarian projects, the way I encounter and observe treatment between housing and renters makes me continually question just how human they think we are.