Everybody hates Mason

A few months before I came to Brum, I visited a friend living in Mason Halls, having already put the Kings of the Vale down as my first choice accommodation.

I’ll admit, the Biblical flooding of the bathroom floor and the Jericho-volume toilets were brought up as an issue, but no student pad is perfect, right? A few mates from Shackleton dropped around, uttering “Mason Wanker” under their breath. Fair enough, we do sort of leech off their space.

Yeah we could probably do with a bar.

It was only on the way back from Fab, when the taxi driver (questionable command of English aside) joined in the “Mason Wanker” chants, that I started to take notice.

So why the Mason hate? The war between accommodation blocks mostly boils down to fees- Mason for meal plan maxes out at over £7000, with Maple Bank on meal plan not quite reaching £5000. So if you live in Mason, it’s your round- every round apparently.

It’s a long way!

The stereotype falls flat most of the time. More money spent on accommodation means less money to spend on unimportant extras like food, books and earplugs. Students are quick to forget that halls are allocated semi-arbitrarily. Plenty of people in the freshers housing crisis ended up with Mason above their budget, we’re not all walking around with daddy’s credit card stuffed in our chinos.

We’re still royalty though. Deal with it.

Despite this, almost every night Mason finds itself subject to mildly catchy drunk chants, all revolving around our perceived wealth. Amongst the most embittered are Tennis Courts, where not working, not even playing tennis and definitely not coming home before 3am are considered unique selling points.

There’s no point getting all defensive though, halls rivalry in this case has been taken to stupid extremes as another offshoot of lad culture.  Uninspired RA’s seem to not be able to think of any way to bond the freshers in their territory except through collective hatred of something slightly different, and some Frosties to get the wheels spinning.

Frosties…and the occasional helpful siege tower.

And what are the differences with Mason? We’ve got slightly wider beds, colour coordinated kitchens and a lake inhabited by roid-swans. (Did I mention the rocket-toilets?) It’s not enough to warrant an actual egging by our neighbours in the case of one block. We’re on meal plan anyway, at least throw us eggs at the weekend.

So if you fancy a swim in our showers or you want a go at rolling our desk-chairs down the road, come along. We’re seriously not that bad. You can’t take our beds though.

Oh and don’t bother leaving a troll comment, I won’t be able to read it- our wifi is pretty pants.