Paying up to $28 thousand a year for tuition, one would expect to be able to take a hot shower.
However, freshmen living on the C and D side of Carle Hall were not so lucky. Those students were stuck taking cold showers for two weeks.
Andrea Turgeon, a freshman Carle Hall resident, negatively reflected on her weeks without hot showers. “I was kind of ticked off. I am paying all this money to go here and feel that they should have it under control,” Turgeon said.
The repairs lasted two weeks and students said it was too long. “We shouldn’t have to wait two weeks for it. It should be fixed that day or at least within the next span of two days,” Turgeon said.
However, an easy fix was not possible, according to Supervisor of Plumbing and Heating Operations for Keene State College Bill Rymes. As soon as they fixed one problem, another would appear. “It was sort of a series of unforeseeable malfunctions back to back,” Rymes said.
Leah Mulroney / Equinox Staff:
Carle Hall hosts mostly first-year students. At the beginning of October, the showers at side C/D of the building had no hot water.
Rymes described the malfunctions when he said the first problem was with a circulating pump that pushes water throughout the residence hall. Nevertheless, once that was fixed, another issue was discovered.
“Then we had a problem with a gas valve in the water heater and we contacted our gas supply company and they came in and replaced that control and cleaned the unit because it had gotten dirty because of the gas pump that had failed. It took a few days for that to get completed for the unit to get ordered so there were a couple days the water would run out and we had to restart the unit,” Rymes explained.
During those days, Turgeon said the bathrooms were empty. “It was literally deserted. There was no one in the bathroom areas, no one in the showers. It was an abandoned bathroom,” Turgeon said. Some people went to the other side of Carle to find a hot shower, but Turgeon said she did not want to travel that far in a towel, for a hot shower. “I didn’t really feel like walking around in a towel to go take a shower [a hot shower] on the other side of the building,” Turgeon stated.
Turgeon said because she decided the trip for a hot shower was too much of a hassle for her, instead she dealt with the cold showers. “I still had to walk down three flights of stairs and go across the hall past the windows, so it was just more work to take a shower so I would rather take a five minute cold shower,” Turgeon said.
The people from the C and D side of Carle who used the A and B side for a hot shower made it harder for the A and B residents to shower.
When asked if the lack of hot water affected his access to the Carle resident Carey Citak said the plumbing issue affected him a little bit.
“Some people showered in cold water… but then some people came over to my side to shower,” Citak said.
After about two weeks on October 14, they were completely repaired. Jim Carley, Associate Director of Residential Life and Housing said he is relieved the issue is fixed. “Just very glad it is over and done with … it is certainly something we don’t want folks having to do, to run across the other side of the building to shower… so I am glad they were finally able to track it down,” Carley said.
Anna Glassman can contacted at aglassman@keene-equinox.com