After a sprinkler line froze burst in the Catherine Dunn Apartments in the early hours of January 22 many residents on ground and first floor became displaced from their original apartments and had to move into apartments on the second floor. Water damage to the apartments meant displacing over 15 residents from their original spaces. As well as the addition of large industrial fans to dry the building, construction constantly going on to fix the water damage, and large items being hauled from the building into dumpster for removal.
Many of the residents affected feel as if they should get reduced housing and or the rest of the semester free of charge due to the move. (The room cost for a single room in the apartments if $3,560 a semester, totaling $7,120 for the 2023-2024 academic year.) Those who moved feel as if free or reduced housing is not just a request simply because they had to move a few boxes. Residents are able to choose their apartments during registration for preference of neighbors, proximity to ground, or for the ability to have an emotional support animal (ESA). For some, they picked their original apartment for a number of factors, rather than picking a random floor. This change of space has impacts far beyond just the hassle of moving their things on a Friday night.
For residents Jojo, Tyler, and Danyel the move from their old apartment into their new one came with some drastic changes. “There was mold in the kitchen, messed up floors, cracks everywhere, caulking damage in the showers, and so many other little things that never should have been let slide” Tyler said. They feel as if the worse conditions call for some sort of compensation, as they had no say in the decision to move and as the move caused disruptions to their personal lives. These residents were originally in one of the newly renovated apartments this year, and were told that they would move into a new apartment with the same conditions as before. “We were told we were getting a newly renovated apartment and come to find out it was not renovated and actually in worse shape than our original apartment” Danyel said. “This “new unit is even more run down than our previous apartment” Jojo said.
The worsened living conditions is not the only reason why residents are requesting reduced housing. “Everything is chaos in our apartment and my mental health has been heavily impacted. Our ESA had just gotten acclimated to the new apartment when we had to move him again, he must re-acclimate to our new space now” Jojo said. Residents were given about four days to move their things on top of classes, jobs, sports, and other happenings of life. This posed a lot of pressure on the resident’s mental health, “as a person who has Autism, Anxiety, ADHD, RAD, and depression it really threw me off as it caused my anxiety to spike; I became very overwhelmed and lost with this whole situation” and “being someone who has autism, chaos and rapid change are never a good thing for me. It throws my mental health into a spiral that takes weeks to get out of, made even worse by it being my last semester with my capstone presentation coming up” Danyel and Tyler said respectively.
However, Clarke’s Residence Life Program has been supportive throughout the whole ordeal, attempting to ease some of the stress by offering residents help moving or other needs. “The night we moved all our things Cat, Callie, Joel, and Tanner were in our apartment trying to solve all our issues. Their solution was to have us make a work order list and send it to them to start working on” Jojo said. “While they [Cat, Callie, Tanner, and Joel] have not been able to fully fix things as this is a difficult situation, they have done their best and we are grateful for that” Tyler said.
While Clarke has been supportive of students transitioning into new apartments many residents are looking for some sort of compensation for their troubles. The ongoing conversation is “should students pay less for having to move to apartments that are not the ones they picked in the beginning of the year?” What do you think[SS1] ?
[SS1]I get this isn’t journalism standard but I thought it would be an interesting way to stimulate conversation
Comments