International students to lose summer storage

The University will no longer offer free on-campus storage during the summer holidays, the Boar has learnt.

This change poses a problem for the international student community at Warwick. With over 2,000 undergraduate and more than 3,500 postgraduate international students attending the University, this extra storage fee that they will now have to pay is “bound to be a problem”, according to undergraduate student Felicia Krolik from Poland who uses the service.

“Throughout the year I accumulate a lot of possessions, and it is expensive to ship all of them back to Poland, so for the past two summers I have stored at least two boxes on campus.” Felicia also pointed out that this announcement has come during the exam season, leaving students little time to make their own arrangements.

The University have provided a list of storage companies in the local area, along with shipping providers for those students who choose to take all their possessions home instead. Prices vary from £7 per week (for one box) to £80 a month (for unlimited storage). The University declined to comment over which companies students should choose.

This news has not been greeted negatively by everybody. Third-year sociologist Erika Li from Japan pointed out that these changes did not affect the majority of the international students who are living off-campus in Coventry and Leamington Spa, as rents for houses generally end in July, and possessions can simply be moved from house to house over the summer rather than using campus storage.

Cyrus Lim, a law student from Malaysia, told the Boar that neither he nor many of his friends ever used the free storage facilities on campus anyway. He commented: “ [I] never really thought that the way that the University stored our possessions was safe, so I usually find an external storage provider, or store my things at my friends’ house who live at Warwick all year round.”

Second-year linguist Tom Faber said that although it is unfortunate that foreign students no longer get the free storage, “there are cuts to most areas of education provision at the moment, so it isn’t surprising that services such as these are being reduced.”

Many other universities in England do not provide a free storage service for overseas students. The University of Nottingham, Leicester and LSE, all of which have a high number of international students, do not provide students storage facilities for their belongings during the summer holidays.