With the start of the second half of the semester, dorm life has changed. Sometimes I wonder if it is just the dorm that I live in this year or if these problems occur in the other dorms on West Chester University’s campus. Living in Sanderson Hall has been quite an experience – a really good one for the first year of my college career. I just do not see why people want to ruin it for themselves and the other hundreds of residents that paid to live there. I could go on and on about how good WCU has been, including dorm life, but I want people to hear about the problems that are occuring. Stopping these acts may be impossible, but maybe after this, the problems may be minimal.
There have been several occurrences where a resident has urinated in the elevator. I am not sure why this person decided to relieve themselves there. Maybe they really could not just hold it until they got to the bathroom. Then it smelled horrible on the elevator, until a custodian had to clean up someone else’s mess. It is not right to make someone clean up something like that up.
What was worse about the situation was that we were informed by the RD that the urine could adversely affect the elevators, causing them to not be in working order. The elevators were then shut down for the day to be cleaned. That meant walking up however many flights of steps to get to your room – and Sanderson has nine floors.
There have been other problems in the hall reoccurring, including finding condoms in the showers and someone taking a “number two” on the bench in the bathroom. The pool table was also broken and therefore unavailable for playing use. This semester the pool table still needs to be repaired, but at least it is open for playing.
Along with the pool table, the ping-pong table is broken. It was not just the net that came loose or anything like that; the table is broken into two separate parts. In high school, gym teachers told us not to lean or stand on the tables. The reason being was that the tables cannot take that much weight and will collapse inward.
It was announced at floor meetings that the end stairwells were dirty. In one stairwell there were small pieces of apples that have been dropped from higher floors or smashed against the wall. In another stairwell, there was broken glass that somebody could have hurt him or herself on.
An inconvenience at the beginning of the school year was that the study lounges on each floor were closed and were due to be opened in the middle of October. This would have made it suitable to do schoolwork at any hour, night or day, in these rooms instead of walking across campus to go to the library. The study lounges opened at the beginning of the second semester, in the middle of January.
The study lounges have been open for about a month and a half now. Already, many of the lounges have had furniture stolen from them. The lack of furniture was one reason there was a delay in opening the lounges.
This became the most recent problem for residents; the study lounges on each floor had been closed until further notice. The reason why? In two of the lounges there had been a used condom left behind. Students at the floor meeting made the comment that the people could have done it in their dorm room. Or at least they could have taken the condom and thrown it out. Whoever decided to do this left the residents to suffer for their mistake. With the study lounges locked, some residents have resulted to late night studying and finishing work in the hallways or on the first floor lobbies. It is distracting to try and do work when people are going in or out of the lobby and they stop to talk to you.
The study lounges opened just before the end of February. It seems as though some things are improving as far as what happens in the dorm. The study lounges, students thought, were going to be closed for a longer time than they were. The ping-pong table was replaced a couple of weeks later and the stairwells appearing more clean than before. As long as this continues to improve, residents can begin to enjoy living in Sanderson Hall.
Ginger Rae Dunbar is a first year student majoring in English. She can be reached at RD655287@wcupa.edu.