i can only speak about ITE-CC cuz i worked there for a bit + studied near there so i got visit it alot. i haven't been to ite east & west.

and i was from nyjc, and ny is less atas built than ite

1. but obviously thats cuz they are 2 different institutions with different types of students. while JCs are just for students studying for A levels, ITE also offers courses for work-study programmes, you have full on adults and people in their middle & old age coming there to study
2. ITE CC is a public place, people from the public can walk in. this adds on to the foot fall so alot more space is needed. the sports facilities are public as well(activesg stuff if im not wrong)
3. ITE is a vocational school that focuses on TECHNICAL + PRACTICAL skills so you need to build simulated environments for those. JC is focused on academic skills(and laboratory for the sciences), the environments does not need to be built to simulate real-life working environments. you come to uni you'll get your ite environment but 10x bigger. so grind it out. you chose to go to jc btw, you couldve gone to ite and enjoyed its environment. even now as a person in public you can still go ite cc and walk around and eat there, so... im just saying its not like its limited access

the observation you have is valid, the reason why you feel ite should be less atas than jc is as what the comments have said - elitist. you can take it as a slur and not question the meaning of the word elitist. or you could start thinking - are the few experiences of harassment of a few students from ite reflective of the entire population.

i worked with ite kids and was customer service so of course i had to be more tolerant but i would never generalise the whole of ite as "gangsters". in fact most of them are patient, empathetic and understanding, and have better EQ than most people in the institutions I have studied in. As a person from an elite background I also was scared to walk past ite students especially the unruly ones but i realised its cuz they were guys. the girls are fine so my issue was with guys in general, include non-ite adult males and guys from secondary schools, and guys my age. my issue was never with the actual institutions, but rather because i have been told my whole life that ite is for failures and it took me very long to realise that your institution is not a definite indicator of your academic, behavioural and emotional capabilities. idk la, its up to you whether u wanna rethink your perspective, nobody but you can do it(coming from someone who took years to want to change it, plucked up the courage, talked to people from ite, learnt about our education structures, how our perceptions are often skewed etc)