A drain pipe in the first floor men’s bathroom in Lockett Hall broke Monday, canceling a mythology class and creating a putrid stench.
The pipe was fixed by 4 p.m. but not before causing a steady drip to fall from the ceiling into the basement lecture hall that continued into the afternoon.
Blake Hebert, executive director of Facility Services, said the mess created by the drip will be cleaned in time for class today.
Hebert said because the pipe was behind a urinal inside a wall, it took extensive work to fix the leak.
“It’s like when a pipe breaks in your home,” Hebert said. “You have to get in there and fix the problem. We had to have masonry technicians come to help get inside the wall.”
Hebert said Facility Services workers have fixed the leak, but it may be a while before the urinal works again because of the damage caused by breaking into the wall behind it.
“We have the parts for the urinal on order, and we’ll get it working as soon as possible,” Hebert said.
Though Hebert said the
problem has been fixed, many students and faculty members were still complaining late Monday afternoon because they said the leak smelled bad.
Richard Warga, classical studies professor, said he had to cancel his CLST 2090 class, Greek and Roman Mythology, because of the foul odor.
“It smelled so nasty that I couldn’t ask anyone to sit through a lecture in there,” Warga said.
Mark Joseph, a kinesiology sophomore and one of Warga’s students and, said he noticed the smell as soon as he walked into class.
“When you first walked in, the smell hit you pretty hard,” Joseph said. “When I was standing outside, I thought it was the bathrooms that smelled bad, but then I realized that it was coming from the ceiling.”
Joseph said most of his 250-person class seemed happy to have the class cancelled, but some students were worried because the class has a test next week.
“How we do on the test is really going to depend on how much material we have to cover in the next two days,” Joseph said.
Tim Slack, assistant professor of sociology, did not cancel the introductory sociology class he teaches in the basement of Lockett, SOCL 2001, but he said the smell was distracting for students.
“I had students all through class that held their shirts over their noses,” Slack said. “It was hard to teach because the students were really antsy.”
Hebert said the time it takes for Facility Services to respond to a leak depends on how soon they are notified about a problem.
“If something is leaking, it might take a while to hear about because we don’t have people in every building,” Hebert said. “It all depends on when we get the call.”
Hebert said leaks like the one in Lockett should be expected on a campus as large as the University’s.
“With more than 400 buildings on campus, there is always something going on,” Hebert said.
Drain pipe causes foul smell in Lockett
April 4, 2005