Living in the dormitories

A little bit of law is necessary to understand. Amongst the things which a public person can own, like the ENS dorms, which by the way are owned by the State (like the entirety of the Ulm, Jourdan and Montrouge campuses), the French law distinguishes a private domain and a public domain. The private one concerns the goods that are placed under the same rules that the ones you or your parents own (your summer house in the countryside, your flat etc.). The public domain are the goods, which have a very privileged status and cannot be loaned (because a private loan forces necessarily the owner to guarantee a certain number of things). This is why the ENS only authorizes us to occupy the public domain. Thus, there is no contract, there is no rent, but there's and authorization to occupy the public domain and a "redevance".

Any thurne in ENS - whatever the campus - costs 315€/month

Only apartments (Montrouge tower L and sometimes few rooms in Ulm) cost a fee depending on the surface, which is fixed by the Board of the ENS :

F2 in tower L: 825€/month loyer

F3 in tower L: 1100€/month, to be shared between 2 occupants (2*550€ loyers)

F4 in tower L: 1302€/month, to be shared between 3 occupants (3*434€ loyers)

Studio for two people at Ulm (for instance A444, A612): 750€/month redevance

No! The fee is calculated on a PER DAY basis. You only pay for the occupied days, which means between when you take the keys and when you get them back (not forgetting a 1-month notice).

Do not forget that apartments at Montrouge have a 11-month lease.

The fee is paid in the middle of each month (usually the 15th) for occupied days of the month BEFORE.

Then if you leave your room the 16th of June, you will have to pay a ~180€ fee on the 15th of July for the 16 occupied days of June.

The Pôle Hébergement is competent for this kind of things. You can contact them at hebergement@ens.psl.eu, or go to their office (corridor CD, ground floor, open from Monday to Friday, 9am-12am and 1:30pm-5pm).

We do not give the keys by ourselves. To get the keys of the room you just obtained at a thurnage or give them back once you are leaving,  please go to the watchman's lodge of your internship campus (Montrouge or Jourdan). For Ulm campus, keys are to be taken and returned  at the Housing Office (Pôle Hébergement) when it's opened. If you cannot be there on time, please ask someone else to get your keys and send an email at hebergement[at]ens[point]fr to give them his/her identity. If you have two keys, please do not forget to give back both of them !

Beware : after a Monthly Room Allocation (Thurnage Partiel, TP), keys should necessarily be returned at the lodge of the campus before being given to another student...

NOTE: for the Ulm campus, keys should preferably be dropped off/picked up at the Housing Office (Pôle Hébergement) during its opening hours. If you are unable to arrive in time, you can send someone to collect the keys for you by notifying the accommodation centre by e-mail. If you wish to collect your keys outside opening hours, please let them know and they will drop your keys off at the watchman's lodge.

For the start of the 2024 school year, the keys can be picked up:

• For first year students: between August 28th and 30th, by appointment (see the back-to-school emails you normally received)
• For the 2A+ : from August 30th, without appointment

In case of a justified need to have access to your room one or two days earlier (for example, if your classes start at the beginnig of the week), you can ask to get your keys earlier from the DG and Housing Office (Pôle Hébergement).

Yes, it is possible, provided you declare it. You can even get a second key and, if necessary, a second badge for the person you are hosting.

The procedure has been changed for the start of the school year 2022, and Degette has not yet been updated. The form on Degette is therefore currently useless.

While waiting for the update, here are the two documents to be filled in and returned by e-mail to the Housing Office (Pôle Hébergement) (hebergement[at]ens[dot]psl[dot]eu), with a copy to the DG (dg[at]ens[dot]fr):

• request form (in French only)
• receipt of reading of the charters by the person accommodated (in French only)

Once your application has been accepted by the Housing Office (Pôle Hébergement), you must go to their office, accompanied by the person you wish to house, who must also bring an identity document. You will be charged €24, payable by credit card to the Badge Office, for the creation of a second badge if your room is on the Jourdan or Panthéon campuses.

However, there are three subtleties:

• The person you are hosting must actually live with you, at least two nights a week on average. Very temporary accommodation is in principle prohibited and cannot be the subject of an application for accommodation for two.
• You must declare the person you are hosting to your thurne's insurer.
• The ENS does not lend extra mattresses or bed bases (nor does it agree to remove the existing bed base) : you are on your own!
• You cannot request accommodation for two if you are both accommodated by the ENS in different rooms. i.e. no duplicate keys!

The COF can loan you a cleaner if you leave your COF membership card as a caution. All cleaners are not brand-new, and you will have to wait for opening hours to borrow one.

Alternatively, the Housing Office (Pôle Hébergement) is open during the day (9h-12h then 13h30-17h) and has also one available.

Plans for each floor are available on degette.

Everything is explained in the Practical informations section. The Logistics Office (travaux@ens.fr) can notably help you in case of clocked sunk, stuck window, but also broken light bulbs.

Everything is reminded in Practical informations sections.

At a Monthly Room Allocation (Thurnage Partiel, TP), usually at the end of each month, you can come and see the DG to exchange your thurne with someone else. Thurnes exchanges are describded in Article 44 of the Thurnage Appendix.

It should be noted that DG or the assembly can estimate the rooms as non-equivalent and ask them to be played at the Monthly Room Allocation. An exchange Carré/not Carré or intercampus may then be blocked.

Room exchanges without notifications to the DG are strictly prohibited, and could lead you to the cheaters category  (and eternal damnation).

No; the dorms are closed during the summer. This year, the dorms are closing the 13th of July 2024.

Moreover, some dorms are open a bit longer during the summer (typically up to the end of July), for those who have an internship in Paris. If you are in that case and need a room after the 13th of July, please send an email to the DG.

Like in any shared place, by living in dormitories you would sometimes have to put up with your neighbour's life, who can be noisy. As the building is shared, you should from time to time be more tolerant than usual.

However, if some neighbours make really too much noise, you should solve this problem with them directly : speak to them, show them they annoy other people. Talk about this in the kitchen, with other neighbours : if a room is often too noisy, you are likely not the only one to hear them, and with several people it would be more efficient to ask for less noise.

If everything failed, DG can be contacted to ask some people to reduce noise. But DG could not interfere in any case as far as people did not try to solve the problem first between them.

However, in quiet corridors, noise is strictly prohibited. You can contact us directly if you find that someone in such a corridor is too noisy.

To live in a boarding school, you certainly don't have to be too agoraphobic and sometimes know how to put up with your neighbours. However, it is also a very enriching experience, and for this reason, a minimum of space sharing makes life much easier (and even more economical, which in Paris is appreciable).

In the kitchen, you will have to share the tasks: washing up, recycling, dustbin, but also cooking: cooking for several people takes much less time and money. So sharing dishes and basic necessities will be quite useful. Make a schedule of who does what, so that it is not always the same people doing everything.

The most important thing is to be aware of the constraints of others: dishes that seem clean to you are not necessarily clean to others, food that seems edible to you and that you leave open can be considered as rubbish...

Finally, the fridge is to be shared, and its space is limited. Be careful not to cook too many things that need to be kept in the fridge, label your food, and above all make sure you don't take other people's food.

You are in charge of your own bin (and please take it outside, for example in the Cour Pasteur if you live in Ulm, not just to your kitchen!).

Household staff take the rubbish out of the kitchens and bathrooms. On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the boarders to take out the recycling bins to the skips located on each campus (remember to rotate the chores!).

You

Cleaning people are only in charge to regularly clean floor, table, and heating plates (because they also have a lot to do elsewhere, notably in the toilets), but their efficiency greatly depend on the space available in the kitchen. Do not forget to clean out the table in the evening to enable cleaning the day after.

Entirely you

Recycling rules are detailled in the Manual to first year students, and in the posters.

Generally speaking no, or you'll have to buy your own box (which is theoretically forbidden).

However some dormitories placed above classrooms/libraries (Rataud/Erasme/Carré) can have WiFi through eduroam or wifiens.

A reminder to know how to access eduroam and wifiens.

The deployment of wifi in the dorms is currently being studied, in April 2024.

In each room there are 2 RJ45 plugs (among which usually only one works) to connect your computer through cable. You will have to register it with its MAC address (cf. here to know how to find it), and send it in an email at rezo.

In the same way DG got younger with its degette interface to do things online, you can now register your computer online via rezoweb. It sould be noted that no more than 3 computers can be registered per room.

The classical way is still  to get your machine registered at the Centre des Ressources Informatiques (behind security lodge in Ulm) when they are open with your MAC address. This method was useful when the RJ45 cable was provided, which is not the case since 2017. You can also send them an email with these informations (number of your room, your name, your MAC address).

Last but not least, historically internet cables where manually put by the students of Rezo club in the 80's (like the mezza).

If you are having problems connecting to the Internet, there are usually two scenarios:

• Rezoweb tells you that it cannot find your thurne, so you should email the Pôle Hébergement to ask if your return has been registered with the CRI.
• Rezoweb tells you that it has your thurne but you do not have Internet, check that the MAC addresses of your machines are present, when you temporarily left, these were lost, so you will have to start the procedure you followed at the beginning of the year again.

If, despite these operations, you still lack an Internet connection, you can reach out to the CRI's assistance by email (assistance-cri@ens.psl.eu), mentioning that these steps have already been carried out and include as much information as possible (screenshots for example).

• On Ulm campus, a paid laundry is available at first level underground in stairs B (leading to the sport room).
• On Montrouge campus, a paid laundry is available in Tower L.
• On Jourdan campus, a paid laundry is available in Hypnos 2, on the ground floor.

On Ulm and Montrouge campus, on professional machines, it's 3€, and 0€50 for 15 minutes drying. By card or coins.

Same thing at Jourdan, except that the dryers run for 20 minutes for 0€50.

In any case washing powder is not furnished.