Students say dorms don't get proper care

by Jeremy Hunt

Daily Lobo

Student Erica Krause said the dorms wouldn't be a bad place to live if the University took better care of them.

"I thought about living here next semester, but we're not now," she said. "We put up with too much, like roach killing and other problems."

Krause lives in an apartment in the Student Residence Center with five students.

Krause said she and her roommates have filed an average of one work order a week since moving in.

The orders were for cockroach infestation, broken lights and a window that will not shut or lock, Krause said.

Chuck Wellman, housing manager, said the students are mistaken about how many work orders were filed.

When a work order is filed, it is taken care of as soon as possible, he said.

The Physical Plant took care of the cockroach problem, and the students didn't even know it, Wellman said.

"They had put in some work orders for pest control, which were addressed. They weren't aware that PPD had come in and sprayed," he said. "We're going to do the best we absolutely can."

Wellman said housing services gets an average of one work order per room per month.

The students wouldn't have needed to file so many if the maintenance crew responded more promptly, said Lea McDuffie, one of Krause's roommates.

"We pay so much for that service," she said. "It should be taken care of immediately - not months to get things like that fixed."

A work order was filed for a broken window in MacKenzie Mobley's room just before spring break, Mobley said.

The ground-floor apartment was empty during spring break, and the window wasn't fixed until a couple of weeks after break, Mobley said.

"We made it clear we were concerned about it," she said. "This is serious because someone could just come in."

Housing services didn't know about the broken window, because the order was not processed, Wellman said.

"We had no knowledge of it," he said. "Once we did have knowledge, I went over there, and that afternoon, we changed out their window. We try to be as absolutely responsive as we can be, but we have to know that the situation exists."

Wellman said the system for filing work orders used to be complicated, and things would get lost in the shuffle.

Students would go to the front desk and request a work order, and then a resident adviser or a desk attendant would file it, Wellman said.

"That's where I think things were getting lost. It was more of a communication issue," he said. "Some of the students' anxiety has come about with their belief that they've made a complaint to someone, and that was made into a work order, and I'm not sure that even happened."

To address the problem with work orders, housing services implemented an online system April 2 for the students to file orders.

"That seems to have helped alleviate the work orders falling through the cracks," he said. "If their work order has been properly put into the system, they get notification on when the expected completion date is."

Wellman said the department has a plan to address the cockroach problem.