To navigate the issue, many students would leave the water running to try and heat it up. \u201cSometimes if you let the water run for like 15 minutes it\u2019ll get a little warm,\u201d Giblin commented. If they were lucky, it would stay warm. Since they had hall bathrooms rather than en suite bathrooms, some students would leave the shower running for the next person, switching out with them so that they could have warm water as well, Giblin added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another solution for some residents was using the showers on another floor. However, Lillybeth Banchon \u201927, a resident of the third floor of Williams Hall, said that there are only four showers on the second and third floors, all of which are very small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to do anything in there because you want to avoid touching the curtains and touching the walls too,\u201d said Banchon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Showering on a different floor, while a solution for some, was not appealing to others. The showers\u2019 small size, constant hygiene issues and minor temperature problems led many residents of Williams Hall to shower in other dorms instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m guilty of [showering in other dorms],\u201d an anonymous source admitted. \u201cI know people get mad about it, which is fair. If it were the other way around, I\u2019d get mad. But they haven\u2019t experienced what we\u2019ve experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For many students, this wasn\u2019t a sustainable solution. Bathrooms in the other freshmen dorms, which all have hall-style bathrooms, were getting congested, preventing residents from showering in their own dorms, according to Catherine Whitwood \u201927, a resident of Merriam Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou just always see people walking in through the back door just going straight to shower,\u201d said Whitwood. \u201cIt\u2019s sometimes annoying because if you want to go in and shower in your own dorm, you have a whole queue. I once sat in a queue with four other girls outside of the bathroom because we all really wanted to shower.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tiffany Elias, a Resident Advisor of the first floor in Williams, confirmed that a multitude of her residents came to her about the temperature of the showers in both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s restrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBoth male and female residents were telling me the showers are cold. I had a floor meeting on [September] 21st and I asked them \u2018are the showers still cold?\u2019 And most of them said \u2018yes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the meeting, Elias filed a maintenance request and encouraged her residents to do the same, directing them to the QR codes posted in each dorm. When on school wifi, students can send reports directly to Facilities from their mobile devices by scanning the QR code, filling out information regarding the issue and submitting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was only because of these requests that the first floor of Williams Hall once again had hot water, Quinbar shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe rely on the students to let us know and then we immediately know where to dispatch somebody,\u201d said Quinbar. \u201cWe received a few calls and two work order requests and so we went over and looked at it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But why did one issue take so long to fix?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quinbar explained that it is hard to tell the difference between an isolated incident and a full-system issue, especially when it comes to a structure as old as the water circulation system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Located on the fourth floor, the small pump keeps thousands of gallons of water circulating throughout the building, Quinbar stated. Hot water can be accessed from any bathroom at any time, without having to clear cold water out of the entire line. With that much wear-and-tear, any dorm with a circulating pump would need its pump to be replaced at some point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not something that Facilities goes and checks every morning because of the total number of dorms,\u201d Quinbar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, the pump in Williams Hall was overlooked by workers troubleshooting the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLast week is when I found out about it,\u201d Quinbar shared. One of the workers brought it up to him after their attempts to fix the issue were unsuccessful. After Quinbar got involved and the proper techniques to assess the situation were employed, the issue was quickly discovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe repaired it once we knew the pump was out, probably in two hours,\u201d Quinbar said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had a call since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order for facilities to fix problems such as this, they need to know about them first. Both Elias and Quinbar brought up the importance of students submitting facilities requests. \u201cIf there\u2019s something you want to change, you\u2019ve got to [submit facilities requests],\u201d Elias said. \u201cThat\u2019s the only way the change is going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Williams-Hall-Shower-576x1024.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theredlandsbulldog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Williams-Hall-Bathroom-Sinks-1024x576.jpeg\")
The Root of the Issue<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s Next?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n