1. Introduction  

On the 29th of June 2018, the Yoshida Dormitory self-government committee requested a meeting with the university authorities. At the meeting, we announced that we would accept the following conditions for meetings proposed by Vice President Kawazoe in 2016:

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1. Each round of negotiations between Yoshida Dormitory and the university authorities will go for two hours or less.

2. The number of students from Yoshida Dormitory participating in each round of negotiations will be 10 or less. 

3. At the beginning of each meeting, each participant will state their name, affiliations etc.

4. Kyoto University and the Yoshida Dormitory committee will decide their respective representatives for each meeting and notify the other party of their choices.

5. The representatives of both sides will lead the discussion. However, other participants can also contribute with the permission of their representative. 

6. Kyoto University will be willing to talk at any time with the Yoshida Dormitory committee regarding various issues related to the dormitory.

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２. Demands made in the negotiations so far

　On April 12, 2018, the Yoshida Dormitory committee asked the university authorities to meet for a discussion. We agreed to comply partially with the 6 conditions for a meeting (listed above) that had been laid down by the university in 2016. However, without giving any reason, Vice President Kawazoe rejected our request to meet and refused to accept the terms we proposed.

　In principle, we should have the right to engage in frank talks with the university authorities about the future of our dormitory. Despite the fact that we have protested about being shut out of negotiations, Vice President Kawazoe and University Manager Okada Kosei have continued to ignore our opinions and refuse to meet with us.

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*団交確約体制の詳細はこちら

　

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3. Notification by the university authorities on June 21 – all students must vacate Yoshida Dormitory by the end of September

 

　On June 21, the university authorities sent a notification to all Yoshida Dormitory students saying that they must vacate the dormitory by the end of September. The following notification was also sent to a number of our residents. The notification reads as follows:

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　“If you do not plan to leave Yoshida Dormitory and seek alternative accommodation immediately, please pay your usual dormitory fees for the month of June to the welfare department of the university by Friday June 29, 2018.  If you do not pay your boarding fee by this date, the university will no longer consider you a resident of Yoshida Dormitory.”

　　

　Over the past 30 years, the Yoshida Dormitory committee has kept a list of all the dormitory’s residents and submitted it to the university authorities every month. When residents are accepted to Yoshida Dormitory, they pay their rent to the Yoshida Dormitory Committee and the committee then transfers all boarding fees in a lump sum to Kyoto University.  However, since April 2018, the university authorities have refused to accept the list of residents created by the dormitory committee. Furthermore, they have demanded that dormitory residents now pay their fees individually to the university authorities. They stated that they would list down the names of each student who came to pay and only accept payment from the students that they deemed to have a legitimate right to stay in the dorm. 

　　

　The Yoshida Dormitory committee did not accept this new payment system proposed by the university. We therefore continued with our usual system for paying boarding fees and transferred the full dormitory rent to the university for the months of April and May 2018. We believe that if the university wishes to change the way we pay our dormitory fees, they must first negotiate with us until our two parties reach a consensus. We will not respond to unilateral attempts by the university to change the way we pay our fees.

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　By judging whose residence fees they will accept and whose they will not, the university is attempting to take away our right as a self-governing dormitory to decide who we will accept to live in our dorm and who we will not. 

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　Furthermore, when the university announced on June 21 that all students must vacate Yoshida Dormitory by the end of September, they contacted our residents and offered them alternate accommodation. The university stated that all residents who did not respond to this offer to change accommodation had to pay their Yoshida Dormitory resident fees individually to the university. If they did not do this by June 29, the university would no longer consider them residents of Yoshida Dormitory. This once again is an infringement on our right as an independent dormitory to choose our own residents. It must be noted that this right was guaranteed to us in a letter by former Vice President Sugiman. The letter is available on our website.HP

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４. Urgent situation – request for small group negotiation sessions with the university

　

　The deadline for vacating Yoshida Dormitory set by the university is approaching quickly. Furthermore, those of our residents who refused to pay their fees individually to the university are now no longer considered legitimate Yoshida Dormitory students. In light of these circumstances, although we are not willing to accept all of the university’s demands, the Yoshida Dormitory Committee acknowledges that is of the utmost importance to restart negotiations with the university as soon as possible. We therefore came to the decision that we had no choice but to accept the 6 conditions proposed by Vice President Kawazoe in 2016 (listed in the introduction). 　

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５. Request from the Yoshida Dormitory Committee to all supporters of Yoshida Dormitory 

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　The Yoshida Dormitory Committee would like to invite you to work together with our residents to protect our dormitory. We believe that if the university becomes aware that many people are following this issue and care about the future of Yoshida Dormitory, they may be encouraged to take a new course. We would greatly appreciate it if you could raise your voice and speak up to others about this crisis. We can all work together to show solidarity against the university and to stop Yoshida Dormitory and its 105 years of history from being destroyed.

 

 

Once again, thank you very much for your continued support of Yoshida Dormitory.   

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