Mary Bianchi stood outside the shower for 10 minutes waiting for the water to get warm. Bianchi, a general business freshman living in the Pentagon Barracks residence halls, finally ducked under the water long enough to wash her hair, rinse and jump back out.
Hot water was unavailable at the Pentagon and the Horseshoe residence halls during Spring Break in order for facility services to repair a leak in the steam distribution system on campus.
The students living in the Pentagon during Spring Break were not notified until they alerted Residential Life about the problem.
Bianchi and her roommate Lessie Wilkins wished they would have known.
“We heard it was going to be turned off at Evangeline, but not here,” Bianchi said.
The Pentagon and the Horseshoe residence hall complexes depend on a steam converter that provides the hot water to the showers, said Steve Waller, associate director of facilities in the department of Residential Life.
When the campus cut off the steam to repair the distribution system, it took the hot water with it, Waller said.
Facility Services Director Peter Davidson said a valve in the steam distribution system had been leaking since last summer, but they could not turn the steam off during the Christmas holidays to repair the problem.
The Spring Break holiday provided a time when the impact to campus would be minimal, Davidson said.
“We try to let people know so they can make arrangements,” Davidson said.
Bianchi said she understands Spring Break was a good time to make repairs, but many students were living in the Pentagon during Spring Break.
“The end of school is less than a month away,” Bianchi said.
Waller said his staff notified the students who were staying in the Horseshoe residence halls two weeks in advance, but they did not notify the students in the Pentagon halls.
“We were surprised like the students when they called and said they had no hot water,” Waller said. “Had we known in advance, we would have set up some accommodations for the students.”
      Davidson sent an e-mail to faculty and staff that listed 25 buildings which could provide hot water during Spring Break. The message stated the Pentagon would be without hot water.
Most of the residence halls have their own boiler and were not affected by the outage, Davidson said.
Bianchi and Wilkins had the option of walking to Graham or Kirby-Smith in order to take a shower. Bianchi said she was too lazy to carry what she needed in order to take a shower.
“I just put up with the cold showers,” Bianchi said.
One reason the students in the Horseshoe were notified is that the hot water has been cut off to those residence halls numerous times in the last 10 years, Davidson said. The last time the steam was cut off to the Horseshoe halls was when the Life Sciences Annex was being built.
“But we haven’t had the entire system down for any duration in the last 10 years,” Davidson said.
He suspects this is the reason for the miscommunication between Residential Life and the students.
Bianchi and Wilkins hope the communication is better next time.
“If they would have let us know, we could have done other things,” Bianchi said.