I've got a bible in my University owned, but off-campus, halls-of-residence style flat.
Out of the six in my flat, I think four have been vandalised quite significantly.
As for the question at the top of the page, stay in halls first year, definitely. It's only 9 months, and it's not that expensive, and the worst thing that can happen is you have to live with some people you don't really like for a while, but you can go home at the weekend and see your pals. Then at the end of first year, you write it off as a poor experiment and start commuting from home for second year onwards.
It's more likely that you'll have a whale of a time in first year halls though, and you'll make friends who you can then either decide to live with in 2nd year, or you can still commute but also have friends in Edinburgh/Dundee too.
I think you should definitely live in halls for first year.