On September 16, 2019 students who live in the O’Brien Residence Hall received an email that the cooling system had stopped working for the entire building.The O’Brien residence hall had not been in use for the last two school years. The reopening of O’Brien hall is an effect of the demolition of Regina Hall.
“We received the first complaint on Sunday evening September 15, 2019,” says Katy Thompson Dean of Students and Director of Res Life.
“There have been other problems with the cooling system in the past. I don’t know if the problem with the AC now is related or independent of past problems. O’Brien had opened in 2008 so it is really one where not a lot of maintenance is needed, but the building had been closed over the last two school years,” she continues.
Thompson also mentioned, “The university has an engineering staff that looked into the broken AC. They found the needed repair was beyond their scope they called a contractor. They identified a problem with the cooling system in which they found that they had to order a part in order to fix it. It took some time to get the part which is why it was a four day process for the AC to be fixed. The building is also an eco-friendly building. The building has special computerized controls where a special technician would be needed.”
In order to help students cope with the heat Thompson says, “We had fans available for check out to the rooms, encouraged them to study in other buildings, reminded them of the library hours, then on Wednesday, the staff purchased a bunch of ice cream treats, rolled a cart, and played the ice cream song to help relieve the heat a little bit. We also offered students a temporary accommodation to be able to sleep somewhere else.”
Res Life did as much as they could in order to help the students cope with the heat, but students still had to deal with the many inconveniences during the maintenance of the cooling system.
According to an anonymous who currently lives in O’Brien, “In our room, the AC broke before everyone else had started complaining. We had to request for fans a week before we got the email that the cooling system in the whole residence hall was not working. It was ninety-one degrees in the hallways and in our rooms it was eighty-five degrees. The windows in O’Brien only slightly opened and the AC was blowing hot air.”
“The first time we complained that the AC was not working, the workers came in to fix the AC, but my roommate’s fridge was in the way of the AC and our fridge was broken in the process of them trying to fix the AC. Our ceiling was also leaking because the AC was not working and the walls are starting to fall out, and all they did to fix the problem was put buckets to catch the water falling from the ceiling. They also don’t tell you what time they are coming in to fix and work on the AC, they would just tell you the day,” the anonymous source continues.
The cooling system took four days to be fixed.
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