“Most students like us from outside Moulmein City live in off-campus accommodations. We don’t want to live on-campus because we want to live freely. We can [tell the school authorities that] we just don’t have an interest in living on campus,” said physics major Min Aung Paing.

Moulmein University’s campus provides accommodations for both male and female students on campus: Thandar Building and Moulmein Building provide housing for male students, while the Nilar, Pu-le (pearl), and Shwe Myaing Buildings are for female students.

“As far as we know, students from outside [Moulmein City] have to live on campus this forthcoming academic year, and now they are building new accommodations,” said Min Aung Paing.

One Moulmein University student from Thanbyuzayat Town said it was the intention of the university’s head professor to require all students from outside Moulmein City to live on-campus, while local students from Moulmein City would be able to live at home.

According to U Kyaw Win, head of Moulmein University’s Student Affairs Department, the university provides accommodation for 330 male and 550 female students, but only a fraction of these rooms have been filled.

“Up to now, there are only 167 male students and 362 female students registered to live on campus,” continued U Kyaw Win.

Each student living in on-campus housing is charged 5000 kyat per month for housing and 500 kyat per meal.

On-campus housing was closed by Burma’s military government following the large-scale democracy protests in 1988 and only reopened last year.

The University of Moulmein was founded in 1953 as a department of Yangon University known as Moulmein Intermediate College. Renamed in 1964 as Moulmein Degree College, it later became an independent university in 1986.