Diagnóstico socioambiental de um alojamento estudantil público e da comunidade do entorno: um estudo da relação entre a universidade e a sociedade

Dormitories are places offered by Brazilian public Universities to undergraduate students evaluated as socio-economically less favored aiming to guarantee the housing of the student in the locality they take a given undergraduate course, once housing is one the points which compose the tripod that supports the concept of student permanence, along with conditions of transportations and food. These places, however, present problems in their management, specially the ones related to social and environmental questions, caused by wrong attitudes and pre-concepts of their own residents, other students and the communities who live around them. So, this project aims to identify and analyze the socio-environmental conditions of a students’ dormitory located in Botucatu/SP which is supported by the Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de Mesquita Filho” (Unesp) as well as the community that surrounds it. The data collecting is based on an exploratory research characterized for interviews that used semi-structured questionnaires and for the creation of a photography record of the region. The obtained data corroborated the tendency of an increasing gap between the Brazilian public universities and the society as well as to the disengagement of them and their students. This diagnosis has permitted to build proposals of educational interventions based on Permaculture, Agroecology and Critical Environmental Education to the improvement of the existing relationships among the students who live at the dormitory and among them and the local community. These interventions may be used as subsidies to the development of future research and extension projects to the local community.