Last week, ceiling tiles in a Hess Hall sixth floor girls’ bathroom collapsed, leaving gaping holes that exposed not only loose wires and pipes, but also clusters of black mold spores, according to occupants.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Students say this is the second time a section of Hess ceiling has fallen down in the span of just a few months.
Hess Hall, centrally located on campus, is commonly known as “The Jungle” by its residents, due to its reputation for broken pipes, damaged lights, various police reports and mold concerns. Built in 1961, this resident hall takes the prize for one of the oldest dorms on campus still standing.
But longevity on campus does not equate to constructional integrity.
The fallen ceiling tiles on the ground of the sixth floor bathroom in Hess Hall.
Students feel their questions surrounding the dorm’s structural integrity and safety are continually dismissed by the housing department.
Elizabeth Wilson, a freshman business management major living in Hess, was not entirely shocked by the outcome of the event.
“We have had a leak or so up there, but no one was really doing anything about it, and it just got so wet that the ceiling just fell in,” Wilson said.
The department did not immediately fix the hole in the ceiling that exposed leaking pipes, instead covering it up with a plastic tarp for several weeks, according to Wilson.
It was not until last week that they got around to permanently fixing the hole and covering up the pipes that had been exposed, Wilson added.
The hole in the ceiling of the sixth floor bathroom in Hess Hall.
Sam Ledford, the communications manager at UT Facility Services, provided a statement on behalf of the department.
“After following up with our team, we’ve determined that the recent incident of falling plaster from the sixth floor H-side community restroom ceiling was the direct result of a leaking pipe. The pipe has been repaired, and the ceiling is being replaced. No structural issues are known at Hess Hall at this time,” Ledford said.
The Beacon reached out to the University Housing Department for comment, but the office provided no statement.
Sydney Cessna, a freshman marketing major living in Hess, expressed distress over the lack of communication between the housing department and the residents living there, especially those in close relation to the actual incident.
“Sometimes it feels like this building could collapse and they wouldn’t tell us. It’s like, ‘Oh, why am I hearing about this from some random student when it’s one floor above me,’ so the proximity is still pretty close,” Cessna said.
The lack of communication can cause misinterpretations of what actually happened in an event like this one, leaving students to make assumptions about the situation. Other residents have wondered why the university decided not to give them more information.
Isabella Rivera, a finance major and freshman resident of the sixth floor, explained how there was no notice that the bathroom would be shut down, only a sign on her front door telling students to use the restrooms on neighboring floors.
“I found out when I woke up to get ready to go to class. It isn’t a crazy inconvenience, but at the same time, there are 65 of us on this floor and 65 of us on the seventh and fifth floor,” Rivera said.
The residence building can house around a thousand students, which means that the community bathrooms found on each floor are shared by a few dozen students each. With the scattered distribution of female students on the sixth floor to other floors, there was a noticeable increase of foot traffic in the morning.
“When I went down to the fifth floor to use the bathroom one morning, there was just no toilet paper in the stalls because more girls were having to use it,” Wilson said.
Rivera also explained how a male painter was originally instructed to finish the bathroom, shutting down its usage for the entirety while he was there. It wasn’t until six days after they started repairs that the housing department would employ a female painter to finish the job, allowing some foot traffic into the restroom to brush teeth and get water.
“Today we found out there would be a female painter so we could use the bathroom, but my thing is, why wasn’t there a female painter in the first place so we could use the sinks in the morning to brush our teeth,” Rivera said.
