Showers and sinks in Kelly Quad, Roosevelt Quad, West Apartments, and Schomburg Apartments ran dry for over 12 hours on Tuesday after the water was shut off — forcing students in 20 buildings to trek to the sports complex or Student Activities Center for their hygiene needs.
Freshman Brittany Swiderski, a resident of Wagner College in Roosevelt Quad, understood that pipe maintenance needed to be done, but still felt inconvenienced by the lack of water. “Walking a mile to the SAC to take a leak was not exactly my idea of fun,” she said.
This is the not first time this semester water in residence halls was turned off. Several weeks ago, the hot water in three buildings within Kelly Quad was shut off, forcing hundreds of students to take unpleasantly cold showers for two days.
The water shut lock offs on Tuesday can be attributed to a project replacing hot water pipes on Campus. The initiative is to replace high temperature water pipes that are more than 30 years old.
Campus Residences officials would not comment on details of the project or the inconveniences faced by students in the residence halls.
Flyers posted inside dorm buildings alerted students to the dates and times the water would be shut off, but without an explanation as to why. The flyers also stated when residents could expect to have running water restored. However, in many buildings water started flowing hours after the expected time. Students in Kelly Quad received flyers telling them the water would be off on Sept. 30, between 7:00a.m.-7p.m. – the water did not come back on until just past 9pm. Sophomore Rupal Patel is a resident of Baruch College in Kelly Quad, an area that has been affected by the pipe work twice this semester. “We had cold water for three days and no water for one, and we’ve only been here for a month. I think it’s ridiculous.” Some students are wondering why this particular construction is taking place now, as opposed to during a holiday break, or over the summer, so that it would not affect so many students.
When the water was turned back on, some students experienced flooding.
“Our bathroom flooded, our toilet overflowed, our shower drain backed up and we had to put towels at the door to make sure it wouldn’t seep through into our common room,” said Vipluv Singh, a sophomore living in Kelly Quad.
Many students living on campus, not just in the aforementioned quads, have complaints relating to things other than the occasional droughts. The residence halls spark many different opinions among the students living in them. Some appear to be happy and comfortable where they are, while others are more than ready to complain about the magnitude of things that have gone wrong in their dorms or suites, such as electrical issues or utilities constantly breaking.
Students can fill out a work order – an electronic form alerting the university to a maintenance problem in their dorm room — for items ranging from a lock repair to a light bulb outage but for situations such as bursting pipes and water outages this is not an option.
Still other students feel the maintenance staff is on top of most problems. “The maintenance manager came in 15 minutes to help us out, as soon as he finished the other rooms and when he cleaned up, he put disinfectant sprays and made sure it was as clean as possible,” said Singh. The construction occurring at many of the dorms, like the entire Roosevelt quad and some select dorms in Kelly, has led to the students nicknaming these places “The projects.”
