The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Bigelow dorm rooms flooded

Many residents of Bigelow were rudely awakened at approximately 1:00 a.m. last Saturday morning by a fire alarm and flood. According to Mark Dickinson, the Director of Facilities Services, it was seemingly caused by a “deliberate, malicious act of vandalism” in a Bigelow 2 bathroom. The aftermath of the event, marked by contradictory viewpoints from both students and staff involved, raises serious questions about communication issues between students, ResLife, and Facilities.The flood originated when the perpetrator, presumably a student, broke off or bashed a sprinkler head on the bathroom’s ceiling, causing a torrent of water to come bursting forth from the broken pipe. This immediately led to flooding throughout the floor, particularly in the corridor and rooms 268 and 265, those across the hall from the bathroom.

“The fire department is almost certain that someone tampered with [the sprinkler],” according to Keith Edwards, the Director of Campus Life. “There’s almost no reason for that to go off unless there was a fire.”

After the head of the sprinkler was broken off and the water began gushing forth, the fire alarm automatically sounded, which “notified security, notified the fire department, and eventually notified the RHD on call and all of the RAs who were there.”

“What happened was Lindsay [Butterfield], who was our hall director on call, went over there, worked with the RAs to get people out of the building until they identified what was going on. And once the fire department got in there, they turned it off and we had to get that sprinkler fixed before we could get the system back on,” Edwards said.

Above all, Edwards emphasized that ResLife’s concern was focused on a complete evacuation of Bigelow.

“The Residential Life responsibility is really addressing the immediacy of [the situation], getting people out of the building, figuring out what’s going on, and then making sure the building is safe.”

The same sentiment was expressed by Fernando Rodriguez, the Residential Hall Director for Bigelow, 30Mac, and Wallace, who was away at a conference at the time of the incident.

“Student safety, as with any crisis situation, is our number one concern,” said Rodriguez.

Shortly after Dickinson and other custodial staff members arrived, teams began to move through the different hallways of Bigelow 2 to clean up the water.

“There were two or three custodians there and I brought three over with me from the Leonard Center,” said Dickinson. “We had carpet shampooers, cleaners, that just suck up the water, so we had a couple of those pieces of equipment, plus squeegees, mops, and buckets.”

“There were a variety of RAs and students milling around,” Dickinson mentioned, “as well as custodians cleaning the stairwells and any rooms with open doors.”

Patrick Snyder ’13 similarly remembers seeing “scores of firefighters, RAs, and other college personnel roaming the halls. There were [also] several workers [who] were already extracting water from the hallway carpet.” Many students moved to adjacent buildings such as Wallace and the Cultural House after the evacuation began, but others remained outside in the cold until around 2:00 AM, when an all-clear was given to return to their rooms in Bigelow. The majority of students’ rooms were almost completely water-free after the flooding, and they were able to sleep in their own rooms on that night.

Several students, however, were not as lucky. “My room was, of course, a disaster,” describes Snyder. “There was about a half inch of standing water across my whole room. I quickly grabbed some clothes and headed over to a friend’s room to crash for the night.” He describes being personally assured that even if “[he] locked the door, RAs had keys and would open it so the cleaning process could begin [that night].”

Unfortunately, when Snyder and others returned to their rooms the following morning, the standing water had not been cleaned up and was “receding into the carpet. It was hot and steamy and it smelled awful.” Charlotte Bernsohn ’13 describes finding her room “sopping wet with no fan running.” The students, angry about possible damage to their belongings, as well as the apparent communication breakdown between them, ResLife, and facilities, attempted to contact a variety of RHDs and RAs in Bigelow that Saturday morning, none of whom picked up the phone.

Finally, after calling security, a single custodian arrived to “help begin the water extracting process” in their rooms, “nearly 12 hours after facilities had cleaned the hallways and declared the situation resolved.” They were confused about why facilities had not yet cleaned their rooms, with Bernsohn mentioning that she “had left her room unlocked. An RA told me that she had picked up my guitar case, meaning that she had been in my room and knew that it was flooded.”

Despite multiple assurances given to students, no successful communication was made between staff members and Facilities. Three of the Residence Hall directors were away at a “Creating Change” conference the weekend that the flood occurred, and the Residence Hall Director on duty, Lindsay Butterfield, who was in Bigelow when the flood began, asked that all questions be directed to other ResLife staff members.

When asked about why rooms may have been missed during the clean-up process, Mark Dickinson emphasized that it was difficult to tell what rooms had not been cleaned up. “There was some damage on the first floor, so I got that sort of cleaned up, and then by that point, going back upstairs at a quarter to three, three o’clockish or something like that, the hallways were pretty well cleaned-up,” he explained. “At that point, doors were closed, and I didn’t even think about it, I didn’t even think about going room by room to students’ rooms.”

He apologized for the state of the students’ rooms, mentioning that if he had the chance to “do the night over again, [he] would have gone room-by-room to make sure that there was no standing water.”

“So I called in two custodians to finish cleaning up, and there was no indication about checking the rooms, because when I was there and I think back on that, rooms were open and we were vacuuming water out of several of them, and so, as I think back on it, I incorrectly kind of made the assumption [that they were clean].”

Dickinson also described a “breakdown” in communication between ResLife and facilities, seemingly based on a misunderstanding regarding whether or not students had returned to their rooms or were planning on spending the night elsewhere. “I was not involved with the directions to students about when they could leave or when they could come back,” he explained.

At the same time, Dickinson also stressed that he did not blame Lindsay Butterfield, the RHD on duty, for any miscommunication, mentioning that she “did an excellent job under the circumstances,” making it difficult to determine exactly where the breakdown occurred. When asked about her involvement, Keith Edwards described how “Lindsay [Butterfield] worked with other RAs to get people out of the building until they identified what was going on,” and that ResLife was unaware of problems in Snyder and Bernsohn’s rooms until they were brought to their attention on Saturday morning/afternoon, despite the students’ claims to the contrary.

“I don’t know why Facilities didn’t go into that room or if they went in and thought it was fine, or if they just missed it or what happened with that.” Edwards did mention that the concerns of Snyder, in particular, were communicated by ResLife (via Ms. Butterfield) to facilities, and that he was under the impression that they were going to “check all the rooms.”

Bigelow is composed of “stone walls,” which, in Edwards’ opinion, made it more difficult to determine “where the water would go” once it was set forth from the broken sprinkler head. “If there’s a gap in those stone walls, it goes right through, and so that’s part of – it’s much l ess predictable in those buildings than it is in this building or GDD,” he explained. Bernsohn, in response, emphasized that it was “obvious that with the water flow from the bathroom, our rooms would be the most affected.”

Edwards also stressed that any student in such a situation should have “contact[ed] security. I think what happened is that [the RHDs called] are the people that didn’t come back until Saturday during the day, so students started calling hall offices. . . and the process to get on-call staff is through security, who then getting hold of them.” Both Snyder and Bernsohn conveyed problems with this approach, saying that they were unaware “security should be contacted in a situation like this,” and that there “is little reason” to have to go through security to reach ResLife staff.

One RA, not involved in the incident, to whom I spoke on condition of anonymity, voiced concerns over ResLife’s cell phone usage, saying that if residential assistants on duty had access to cell phones, they may have been better able to respond to the needs of students in situations like this. Edwards maintained that ResLife was “working hard” to address all concerns that students had voiced, whether they had contacted “security, their RA, or the RHD,” and that they “were looking to create a central source of information to deal with future problems so that students would not slip through the cracks.”

Rodriguez also emphasized that in any emergency, “students should contact security to gain access to off-hour ResLife personnel,” explaining his “understanding that the initial calls regarding the rooms went to individual offices and because of the weekend, the calls went unanswered. In emergency situations, students should always contact security. Security is the link to the RHD on-call, to facilities, basically to all after-hours personnel.”

The affected students expressed contentment with the help given to them after ResLife became fully aware of their problems, but are still frustrated with the way that the process played out. “I hope that other members of this community realize that this could have just as easily been them, and that they are equally concerned,” said Snyder. “It is my hope that this incident will result in better communication within ResLife and across college departments.”

Mr. Rodriguez wanted to emphasize that the ultimate fault of the situation still lies with the unknown perpetrator responsible for breaking the sprinkler head in the first place, and that ResLife was doing the best that they could under the circumstances. “I would like to remind all students, that the events that happened this past weekend were the result of destructive actions by individual(s) in our community. I would hope anyone with information about who is responsible will come forward. As a collective body, Residence Life, Facilities, I and my staff, have done everything possible to ensure that their voices were heard and their concerns addressed to the fullest extent.”college personnel roaming the halls.

“There were [also] several workers who were already extracting water from the hallway carpet,” Snyder said.

Many students moved to adjacent buildings such as Wallace and the Cultural House after the evacuation began, but others remained outside in the cold until around 2:00 a.m., when an all-clear was given to return to their rooms in Bigelow. The majority of students’ rooms were almost completely water-free after the flooding, and they were able to sleep in their own rooms on that night.

Several students, however, were not as lucky.

“My room was, of course, a disaster,” Snyder said. “There was about a half inch of standing water across my whole room. I quickly grabbed some clothes and headed over to a friend’s room to crash for the night.”

He said he was personally assured that even if “[he] locked the door, RAs had keys and would open it so the cleaning process could begin [that night].”

Unfortunately, when Snyder and others returned to their rooms the following morning, the standing water had not been cleaned up and was “receding into the carpet,” Snyder said.

“It was hot and steamy and it smelled awful.”

Charlotte Bernsohn ’13 said she found her room “sopping wet with no fan running.” The students, angry about possible damage to their belongings, as well as the apparent communication breakdown between them, ResLife, and facilities, attempted to contact a variety of RHDs and RAs in Bigelow that Saturday morning, none of whom picked up the phone.

Finally, after calling security, a single custodian arrived to help begin the water extracting process in their rooms, which according to Bernsohn was nearly 12 hours after facilities had cleaned the hallways and declared the situation resolved. Students were confused about why facilities had not yet cleaned their rooms, and Bernsohn added that she had left her room unlocked.

“An RA told me that she had picked up my guitar case, meaning that she had been in my room and knew that it was flooded,” Bernsohn said.

Despite multiple assurances given to students, no successful communication was made between staff members and Facilities. Three of the residence hall directors were away at a “Creating Change” conference the weekend that the flood occurred, and the RHD on duty, Lindsay Butterfield, who was in Bigelow when the flood began, asked that all questions be directed to other ResLife staff members.

When asked about why rooms may have been missed during the clean-up process, Mark Dickinson emphasized that it was difficult to tell what rooms had not been cleaned up.

“There was some damage on the first floor, so I got that sort of cleaned up, and then by that point, going back upstairs at a quarter to three, three o’clockish, the hallways were pretty well cleaned-up,” he said. “At that point, doors were closed, and I didn’t even think about it, I didn’t even think about going room by room to students’ rooms.”

Dickinson apologized for the state of the students’ rooms, mentioning that if he had the chance to “do the night over again, [he] would have gone room-by-room to make sure that there was no standing water.”

“I called in two custodians to finish cleaning up, and there was no indication about checking the rooms because when I was there and I think back on that, rooms were open and we were vacuuming water out of several of them. As I think back on it, I incorrectly made the assumption [that they were clean].”

Dickinson also described a “breakdown” in communication between ResLife and Facilities, seemingly based on a misunderstanding regarding whether or not students had returned to their rooms or were planning on spending the night elsewhere. “I was not involved with the directions to students about when they could leave or when they could come back,” he explained.

At the same time, Dickinson also stressed that he did not blame Lindsay Butterfield, the RHD on duty, for any miscommunication, and said that she “did an excellent job under the circumstances,” making it difficult to determine exactly where the breakdown occurred. When asked about her involvement, Keith Edwards described how “Lindsay [Butterfield] worked with other RAs to get people out of the building until they identified what was going on,” and that ResLife was unaware of problems in Snyder and Bernsohn’s rooms until they were brought to their attention on Saturday afternoon, despite the students’ claims to the contrary.

“I don’t know why Facilities didn’t go into that room or if they went in and thought it was fine, or if they just missed it or what happened with that,” Edwards said. He did mention that the concerns of Snyder, in particular, were communicated by ResLife via Butterfield to Facilities, and that he was under the impression that they were going to “check all the rooms.”

Bigelow is composed of stone walls, which according to Edwards, made it more difficult to determine where the water would go once it was set forth from the broken sprinkler head.

“If th ere’s a gap in those stone walls, it goes right through, and so that’s part of – it’s much less predictable in those buildings than it is in this building or GDD,” Edwards said. Bernsohn, in response, emphasized that it was “obvious that with the water flow from the bathroom, our rooms would be the most affected.”

Edwards also stressed that any student in such a situation should have “contact[ed] security. I think what happened is that [the RHDs called] are the people that didn’t come back until Saturday during the day, so students started calling hall offices. . . and the process to get on-call staff is through security, who then gets ahold of them.” Both Snyder and Bernsohn expressed concernwith this approach, saying that they were unaware “security should be contacted in a situation like this.”

Edwards said that ResLife was “working hard” to address all concerns that students had voiced, whether they had contacted “security, their RA, or the RHD,” and that they “were looking to create a central source of information to deal with future problems so that students would not slip through the cracks.”

Rodriguez also emphasized that in any emergency, students should contact security to gain access to off-hour ResLife personnel.

“My understanding that the initial calls regarding the rooms went to individual offices and because of the weekend, the calls went unanswered,” Rodriguez said. “In emergency situations, students should always contact security. Security is the link to the RHD on-call, to facilities, basically to all after-hours personnel.”

The affected students expressed contentment with the help given to them after ResLife became fully aware of their problems, but are still frustrated with the way that the process played out.

“I hope that other members of this community realize that this could have just as easily been them, and that they are equally concerned,” said Snyder. “It is my hope that this incident will result in better communication within ResLife and across college departments.”

Rodriguez emphasized that the ultimate fault of the situation still lies with the unknown perpetrator responsible for breaking the sprinkler head in the first place, and that ResLife was doing the best that they could under the circumstances.

“I would like to remind all students, that the events that happened this past weekend were the result of destructive actions by individual(s) in our community. I would hope anyone with information about who is responsible will come forward. As a collective body, Residential Life, Facilities, I and my staff, have done everything possible to ensure that their voices were heard and their concerns addressed to the fullest extent.

View Comments (6)
More to Discover

Comments (6)

All The Mac Weekly Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • P

    Pippa ArnoldSep 9, 2019 at 12:30 pm

    Do you have a spam problem on this blog; I also am a blogger, and I was wanting to know your situation; many of us have developed some nice methods and we are looking to swap techniques with others, be sure to shoot me an email if interested.

    Reply