Photo: Megan White
Students at a forum in Gibble Auditorium Monday, Aug. 27 could be heard calling it “the Etown refugee crisis.” The students at the meeting, most of them residents of the Vera Hackman Apartments, had been relocated to other residence halls the week of Monday, Aug. 20 when a microbial growth was found in both the North and South apartment buildings. Some students had lived in the apartments all summer, while others moved straight into temporary housing as they arrived for the fall semester.
Compleat Restorations, a local disaster restoration firm, cleaned all the rooms in both buildings before students moved back in Friday, Aug. 31. Residence Life provided new mattresses for every student, and Facilities Management placed a dehumidifier in each living room.
It is still unclear what the substance was, but Facilities Management representatives at the Gibble Auditorium meeting reassured students that the growth is non-hazardous.
Facilities Management received a work order regarding a white microbial substance on multiple surfaces in an apartment Monday, Aug. 20. Once students moved out, the treatment process began Thursday, Aug. 23. A section on the apartments’ page of Elizabethtown College’s website names recent high humidity as the growth’s cause.
According to Facilities Management Director Mark Zimmerman, the College decided not to test the substance since testing would delay treatment. Instead, the College immediately implemented a treatment plan.
When students at the Gibble Auditorium meeting questioned why a sample was not taken for testing during cleaning, Compleat Restorations Business Development Manager Aaron Jacobs said the apartments’ air quality would be tested after cleaning.
“So we’re never going to know what it was?” senior Angeline Springer asked.
“That is correct,” Jacobs replied after a pause.
This was one of several tense exchanges at the meeting, where about 50 students met with Zimmerman, Director of Residence Life Allison Bridgeman, Vice President for Student Life Dr. Celestino Limas, Environmental Services Director Curtis Edwards, Vice President of Administration and Finance Bob Wallett and Compleat Restorations representatives.
Zimmerman’s comment on students being responsible for emptying dehumidifiers elicited groans. Junior Pleasant Sprinkle-Williams, whose backpack was covered with growth, showed Zimmerman a picture she took of growth in her air duct.
“It’ll be interesting to see if anything else is damaged when we move back,” she said, looking at the new blue and green backpack Bridgeman and Coordinator of Housing Operations Wendi Kenley bought out of pocket for her.
By meeting’s end, Bridgeman had written a list of topics to follow up on, including compensation for displaced students.
At a meeting Thursday, Aug. 30, Bridgeman and several students brainstormed ideas for reimbursement for displacement and damaged items.
“The best ideas come from the students,” Bridgeman said before the meeting. “It’s nice to see their commitment to getting information and giving feedback.”
Other follow-up items included instructions for how to empty dehumidifiers, which will stay in the apartments all year. Students received these instructions in a folder upon arriving back in the apartments.
Limas co-chairs a task force set up to handle the situation. He said he hopes the task force can evaluate Etown’s response to see where it succeeded and/or failed.
“When you have housing as old as ours you need to plan…because it’s higher maintenance than newer buildings, so we need a plan that shows awareness of that,” he said.
He said taking care of “adjacent issues” that arise because of the growth is as important as handling the growth itself. Since becoming aware of the growth, students have drawn attention to things like testing the substance and examining the work order system. One issue that received attention at the Gibble Auditorium meeting was a rumor that Facilities Management instructed its student paint crew to paint over mold and not kill it.
“We do not paint over mold,” Zimmerman said at the Gibble Auditorium meeting. “If we painted over mold, it would bleed through the paint.”
Junior paint crew member Tasha Lewis confirmed, saying that while crew members have painted over stained spots where mold was, it was only after Environmental Services killed it. Sprinkle-Williams said she did not remember being instructed to paint over mold in her time on the paint crew.
Zimmerman also admitted Facilities Management was not taking advantage of all the School Dude work order system’s features, one of which allows students to track the progress of their work orders. Zimmerman said Facilities Management will meet with School Dude representatives to learn about the other features that could benefit the College. Facilities Management has been using School Dude for over a decade.
“It’s important that communication goes both ways, though,” Zimmerman said. “We’ll go out and fix it if a work order is put in, but we can’t fix what we don’t know is broken.”
Zimmerman also addressed a recent rumor of mold in Royer Residence Hall. When workers investigated, they found not mold but a frayed piece of what Zimmerman called “anchor rope.”
“We’re responding to any moisture-based concerns immediately now,” he said.
For now, the dehumidifiers will stay in the apartments until the planned summer 2019 renovation of the apartments and the Schreiber Quadrangle.
In the meantime, students will empty their dehumidifiers and staff will address another concern raised at the Gibble Auditorium meeting: repairing relationships with students.
“Everyone involved in navigating a solution – Residence Life, Facilities, students – wants the same thing: for this to be taken care of,” Limas said. “Clearly that hasn’t come through, since some students have expressed to me they’re not seeing that, so hopefully we can regain some of that trust back.”
