Halls, Traditions & Campus Life (Part 2): Hung Hom vs. Homantin, Hall Council Autonomy, and the Fairness of Bedspace Allocation

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) student residence module (Part 2) — continuing from Part 1: Facilities, Systems, and the Annual Calendar at Hung Hom and Homantin. This part focuses on: the contrasting rhythms of life in the two residence clusters, the autonomy of Hall Councils, the identity of the Residential Colleges, the debate over perceived fairness in bedspace allocation, and the relationship between the residential experience and a "PolyU person" identity.

Simply "having a bedspace" means living two different university lives depending on whether you are in Hung Hom or Homantin—one is a "home right after class," the other adds "an extra ten thousand steps a day." This difference, along with the underlying competition for places and tensions over self-governance, is the truly challenging and worthwhile part of halls culture to document.

# 1. Hung Hom and Homantin: Two Different Hall Experiences

PolyU's halls culture cannot be summed up by a simple "has a hall / no hall" dichotomy because Hung Hom and Homantin offer two distinct rhythms of life. Hung Hom halls, located close to the main campus, allow students to weave their classrooms, library, hall, canteen, sports facilities, and the amenities around Hung Hom Station into a short, continuous loop. This proximity advantage makes it possible to "go back to hall after class," "pop upstairs during lunch break," or "walk back after late-night revision." For students with tight schedules, heavy lab workloads, or evening commitments like meetings or team training, Hung Hom halls function more like an extension of campus living.

In contrast, Homantin halls turn "living in hall" into a different kind of urban commuting experience. They feature newer buildings, more complete residential spaces, and themed Residential Colleges, but come with the overhead of a walk, MTR ride, or bus connection to the main campus. For residents, this is not merely an inconvenience; it alters social patterns. A Hung Hom resident is more likely to bump into classmates on campus spontaneously, whereas a Homantin resident relies more heavily on networks within the same tower and floor, hall-organised activities, and fixed commuting groups. The hall canteen, common spaces, tutor-led activities, and floor group chats thus become far more important than main campus touchpoints.

This difference also affects how students rank their bedspace preferences. Students who prioritise proximity to lectures, varsity team training, or evening society meetings generally find Hung Hom more appealing; those who value a newer living environment, thematic colleges, and a relatively independent life space might find Homantin more suitable. While casual comparisons often frame it as "Hung Hom for convenience, Homantin for newness," the real choice depends on one's class schedule, social circle, budget, level of engagement in hall activities, and personal daily rhythm.

# 2. The Hall Council and "Small-Scale Student Self-Governance"

Each residence has a Hall Council, which, in PolyU's college-less system, is the unit closest to collegiate student self-governance. The Hall Council's role extends far beyond organising a few events; it shoulders welfare, communication, orientation, community maintenance, and the preservation of traditions. The newcomers' welcome, Hall Orientation Camp, Hall Festival, floor activities, birthday parties, annual dinners, and sports or cultural competitions all depend on successive cohorts of student officers to sustain. For many PolyU students, their first understanding of "running for a committee" (上莊) begins not with the university-wide student union but with the duties of a hall committee, the activities on a specific floor, and that first Hall Camp.

The Hall Council's formal power is limited, but its impact is deeply personal. The university-wide student union debates constitutions, statements, and university governance; the Hall Council handles evening parties, noise disputes, common spaces, the halls atmosphere, feedback on facilities, bedspace information, and interpersonal relations on the floor. Precisely because its impact is so immediate, minor issues can quickly escalate into controversy within a single hall: activity fees, the attitude of committee officers, floor allocation, the boundaries set during orientation games, the hall points system, residency renewal eligibility, and evaluations of the hall canteen can all become sources of contention. Writing about these matters requires more caution than chronicling political history, as it often involves undisclosed personal and small-group dynamics.

This site handles hall-related controversies by adhering to three principles. First, institutional facts can be reported: hall capacities, block names, the existence of Hall Councils, the establishment of Residential Colleges, official activities, and bedspace planning. Second, events documented in open sources can be reported: university announcements, student media surveys, public statements by Hall Councils, and court or regulatory filings. Third, content from purely private group chats, anonymous posts, or singular gripes is not reported as fact, serving at most as a lead for further verification. Hall life readily generates strong word-of-mouth, but an alternative-history site cannot mistake word-of-mouth for a verdict.

The annual transition of Hall Council leadership is itself a minor ritual: in the second half of each academic year, halls enter their nomination season, during which candidate cabinets prepare manifestos, canvass for votes, hold consultation sessions, and ultimately stand for election by the hall's full resident body to form the new executive committee. Compared to university-wide student union elections, Hall Council elections are smaller in scale and have a lower barrier to participation, often representing a student's first complete experience of the "vote, debate, take office" process—even if the stage is just a few floors of a 22-storey tower.

This "small-scale self-governance" also has a pronounced intergenerational handover problem. Hall Council officers typically serve a one-year term. Whether knowledge and personal networks can be smoothly transferred between the outgoing and incoming committees directly affects the quality of the next year's activities and the overall hall atmosphere. Experienced Wardens and the tutor team (see the "Wardens and Tutors" section in Part 1) play the role of a sort of "institutional memory" here. Spanning the tenure of multiple student cohorts, they are crucial intermediaries who ensure the continuity of hall rules and history, compensating for the inherent instability of student self-governance that "regenerates" annually.

# 3. Residential Colleges are Not the Traditional Collegiate System

The creation of CURI and STARS has allowed PolyU to develop themed residential communities outside a college system. Their names might easily evoke associations with CUHK's colleges, but their functions are different. A CUHK college typically bears multiple roles: identity and belonging, general education, scholarships, accommodation, a tutorial system, and an alumni network. PolyU's Residential Colleges function more like implanting a themed learning community within a hall, using research innovation or arts and science as a theme to bring students with similar interests together in the same living environment.

This system's advantage is its flexibility. It does not require every student to be assigned to a college, nor does it permanently bind a student's identity to a college name. Instead, interested students apply to enter a specific themed community. The weakness is a shallower sense of identity: students who have not lived there or participated in the programmes may not see CURI/STARS as their own identity label. For PolyU, this mechanism is better understood as "a college-less university's partial response to the collegiate experience" rather than a full-scale collegialisation.

From a student life perspective, the significance of the Residential Colleges lies in transforming the halls from a pure accommodation resource into a learning environment. Research project discussions, resident tutors, interdisciplinary workshops, artistic activities, and peer networks can all foster sustained learning relationships among residents outside the classroom. If PolyU continues to increase its bedspace in the future, whether the Residential Colleges expand, add new themes, or link up with undergraduate academies or interdisciplinary schools will determine whether halls culture simply grows larger, or becomes richer in educational content.

# 4. Bedspace Competition and Perceived Fairness

Bedspace scarcity is a common problem for urban universities in Hong Kong, and PolyU feels it acutely. With its main campus in Hung Hom and high surrounding rents, non-local students, local students with long commutes, exchange students, postgraduates, and athletes all have different demands for accommodation. The University officially emphasises that halls provide a platform for cross-cultural exchange and personal development, but what students feel most directly is often the application outcome: who gets a bedspace, who has to commute, who can renew their residency, and who receives priority due to activity points or special status.

Perceived fairness in bedspace allocation has several sensitive points. The first is the local/non-local quota split. Local students may feel their long commutes also warrant a bedspace, while non-local students typically have no family home to depend on. The second is the allocation between lower-year and upper-year students. Newcomers need space to adapt to university, while upper-year students may have a greater need for stable accommodation due to internships, final-year projects, lab work, and society responsibilities. The third is allocation based on merit/contribution. Service in the Hall Council, activity participation, varsity team training, and Residential College programmes can all become criteria for renewal or priority consideration, but if standards are not transparent, this can easily be interpreted as "connections matter more than competence."

If PolyU is to achieve its "two years of accommodation in four," it needs not only to build more blocks but also to make clear its allocation rules, appeals channels, and renewal criteria. Once new halls come online, a higher residency rate will ease the supply-demand conflict, but the dual-site geography will also raise new questions: how will bedspaces be distributed among locations in Kowloon Tong, Homantin, and Hung Hom? Will the varying transport costs of different halls be factored in? Can students choose based on where their classes are or their activity needs? These will all shape the sense of fairness in the next generation of PolyU halls culture.

# 5. Why the Halls Sections are Separated from 10-colleges

The PolyU site's 10-colleges module is dedicated to the "no-college system" and the accommodation structure; this section, placed under campus life, focuses on how students live, form communities, and generate controversy. The former answers questions of institutional classification: Does PolyU have colleges? Do Residential Colleges count as colleges? Where do halls sit within the university structure? The latter answers questions of lived experience: What is different about living in Hung Hom versus Homantin? How does a Hall Council operate? Why are Hall O-Camp, Hall Festival, and floor life important? How does bedspace competition affect student feelings?

Keeping the two sections separate prevents a single article from reading like a cross between an institutional encyclopaedia and a piece of campus oral history. Authentic halls culture is not just a list of building names and capacities, nor a few lines about "hall life being so fun." It is something jointly produced by space, institutions, resources, student self-governance, and the friction of daily cohabitation. The campus proximity of Hung Hom, the relative independence of Homantin, the future expansion into Kowloon Tong, and the thematic focus of CURI/STARS together form the next chapter of PolyU's residential life.

# 6. The Residential Experience and the PolyU Identity

For many PolyU students, the identity of a "PolyU person" begins not with a grand ceremony, but in the mundane details of residential life: the first time walking from the Hung Hom hall footbridge back to campus; the first time rushing to an early-morning class from a Homantin hall; the first time sharing a table in the canteen with someone from the same floor; the first time attending an unappealing activity just to earn hall points; the first time meeting people from entirely different disciplines at a Hall O-Camp. These experiences are so ordinary, yet they lodge a student in a university's memory more powerfully than any promotional slogan.

PolyU's lack of a college system means its halls do not confer the institutional identity of a CUHK college. But precisely because there are no colleges, the halls become one of the few living spheres that can cut across disciplines, year groups, and the local/non-local divide. Classes sort students into professions; internships push them towards industry. The halls make people from different backgrounds live together on the same floor. If PolyU's academic identity is "professionalism," then the halls offer the complementary dimension of "living together." As bedspace increases, whether PolyU can include more students in this shared life will directly affect the depth of its campus culture.

The halls are also a frontline for PolyU's efforts in internationalisation and the integration of mainland Chinese students. Cross-cultural contact in the classroom is often fleeting, dissolving once the group project is done. In the halls, diet, language, sleep schedules, hygiene habits, festivals, and interpersonal boundaries are all thrown into the same space for repeated negotiation. A good hall system turns this negotiation into learning; a bad one allows misunderstandings to calcify into group stereotypes. Hall tutors, RAs, Hall Councils, and floor activities are therefore not mere decoration, but the essential infrastructure for maintaining a diverse student body in a state capable of living together.

In other words, halls are not an accessory to campus life but a key scene in PolyU's journey from professional training to whole-person education. Without sufficient bedspaces, many students will see PolyU merely as a place to attend classes. With stable accommodation and a healthy halls culture, students are far more likely to see their life in Hung Hom, Homantin, and a future Kowloon Tong hall as their full university life.