By Louis Down
Being able to walk around one’s home barefoot is a liberty that society takes for granted. This is something that several residents in the Currie and Morgan dormitories have come to realize, as on Feb. 7, the toilets began to overflow. This overflow of toilet water even made its way to the corridors.
This is not the first incidence of bathrooms overflowing and flooding resident’s bedrooms. The almost always present Brian Jobson came to the rescue of the residents. Making his way back onto campus after hours, in order to try and clean and dry carpets that had become waterlogged due to the flooding. However, the drying of the carpets was a lengthy process that required large fans and time to help the carpets dry.
Currie resident, Kelly Odabashain, was asked his feelings on his room flooding, to which he jokingly replied, “which time?” before following up with saying,
“I feel its highly unsanitary, the water was shut off, so I was unable to shower after practice and, to make matters worse, my floor was disgusting with the smell of dirty toilet water soaked into the carpet.”
Residents were unhappy with the situation; however, it is not the fault of anyone directly. An email was sent out by Brian Howell at 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 7, notifying residents that:
“When facilities opened up the pipeline to see what was causing the blockage, they noticed that the waterway was blocked by various items flushed down our toilets (condoms, tampons, paper towels, candy wrappers, etc.)”
Residence life attempted to assist students directly affected by the blocked water way and were offered temporary rooms, whilst the heavy-duty fans dried their room. Some students took this offer as they found the smell and idea of sleeping in the moist room uncomfortable.
Even after the carpets dried there is still an unusual smell residing in the corridors of first floor Currie and in the bedrooms of those directly affected by the backed-up water system. Outside of residents being diligent in their efforts to not throw inappropriate items and objects down their toilets, perhaps other measures may be explored in order to prevent this from happening again.
When staying on campus the dormitory is a student’s home and sanctuary. Every student should feel comfortable to treat it as such. Which is why being able to walk around barefoot is something residents should feel comfortable doing. The idea of the carpets being saturated with water from the toilet doesn’t allow this and hopefully action will be taken in the future to ensure that residents continue to feel comfortable in their temporary homes.
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