Entering female student housing : oppression and dehumanization in the context of poor students

Abstract

The permanence of popular students in public universities is a theme of emerging discussion and constant demand throughout the history of Brazil. The student residences, spaces destined for the housing of students benefiting from student assistance in universities, are among the public policy actions for the permanence of poor students in higher education. However, identifying the profile and actively listening to the voices of the students who live in these student residences still seems to be an extensive gap in research in the Human Sciences. The present article is the result of an investigation that aimed to build an understanding about the ways of life of students in a dormitory of a university in the countryside of Minas Gerais. Through participant research, we immersed ourselves in the daily life of a women's dormitory and focused on the experience of four student-owners who told us about their daily lives, in order to have a critical look at the reality of individuals coming from the lower social classes in their university trajectories. Based on Freire's theoretical framework, we focus, on the themes unveiled in the process of participant observation and interviews with the female residents: racism, machismo and hunger. In the midst of the search for resistance in the university space, the students denounce the dehumanization to which they are subjected in their daily lives and expose the radical ethical-political demand of our universities to guarantee protection to vulnerable students who seek, in higher education, opportunities to change their oppressive realities.