Sarah Shelton – Photo Editor
Leaking ceilings, bug infestations and mold are among some of the problems brought to Residence Life’s attention within the last year.
The biggest complaints I hear among residents all involve their dorm and how problems are not solved.
When brainstorming topics in one of my journalism classes, one of my classmates shared how when their toilet was leaking, their Resident Adviser, RA, told them to spill more water because maintenance can only come if it is an emergency.
This reminds me of how last semester when my ceiling was leaking it took over a day to get someone to fix it. The RA on duty came, looked at it and sent maintenance to look at it. Maintenance then went upstairs as that was the source of the leak. The RA then said to come down to get her if we have any questions.
My roommate and I went down an hour after maintenance came because the ceiling was still leaking and the RA was gone. The desk attendant had no idea what we were talking about.
I filled three big bowls of water overnight.
My classmate mentioned how the Hall Director and RAs are not at fault and I totally agree. They are in the same boat as us. With this specific problem, my hall director came up right at 8 in the morning and got the problem solved. However, I now sleep with mold right above me on my ceiling from this incident.
This classmate also described how their first floor window is broken and maintenance has not come for months, so they just put the bed in front of the window.
More problems, just in North Campus, include broken toilets, broken elevators with out of date certifications, holes in the wall, mice and dryers not working.
Schwartz had a wasp infestation and a big spread of mold.
West Campus has broken windows, broken shower lights and spiders.
Someone down my hall had a toilet leak in the room above her and the water leaked on her bed. They moved her to another room for the night as she did not want to sleep in “poop water.”
At the beginning of this year, I got placed in a bug infested dorm. For more information on that, you can read my article, “Senior year starts off with fleas and stitches – Opinion” on thesouthernnews.org
In the article I mentioned how there was a cat allowed in the dorm over the summer that had fleas and my roommate and I got bitten up and were forced to stay in the room for days. When they finally moved us out, it took the exterminator two weeks to come.
As we could not bring the stuff that could not be washed, we lost a lot of items. The Associate Director of Housing Operations said in an email to my roommate that they took fast action and could not reimburse us because we did not have renters insurance.
Everyone I asked had never heard of renters insurance for dorms before this, however during Spring 2023 check-in, they finally made a clear pop-up that you can get it. My roommate can probably be thanked for that.
ResLife has all summer to fix a lot of these problems, however they instead rent out the dorms to strangers and flea infested cats.
