The Quadrangle

Issue date: 3/23/05 Section: News

The official seal of Manhattan College´s physical plant

Last semester, a toilet broke down in a suite of Horan Hall, leaving ten boys with conflicting schedules and hectic social lives to share one toilet. Despite repeated calls to maintenance, the toilet remained unfixed for the remainder of the semester. It was finally repaired at the start of the spring semester-and days later, it broke down again.

Brendan Atwood, one of the residents of the suite, shared that the broken toilet was just one of the many maintenance problems encountered throughout the semester. "We went without hot water for showers most of the time, although both showers seem to be fixed now. We did try numerous times to get them fixed during the first semester but there was little response." Atwood and his roommate Jonathan Chambers, also experienced problems with their internet connections. As for the broken toilet, he explained, "Our toilet was completely broken when I came back to school after being gone for the weekend. We tried to get it fixed several times. Finally one or two weeks later, someone came to look at it, attempted to fix it, and failed. I believe the toilet finally got fixed about two or three weeks ago and all seems to be in order in our dorms for the last half of our last semester."

Stories like this one are not unfamiliar to the majority of Manhattan College residents. A window in one of the girls' shower rooms of Jasper Hall has reportedly been broken for three years, and another off-campus residence hall has holes in the ceiling. Students are led to wonder who is responsible for fixing these problems, and why they sometimes go without repair for periods of time.

The Physical Plant of Manhattan College states that they are working hard to fix these problems, but various complications delay the reparation process. Vick Schneider, the Assistant Director for the Physical Plant, explained that the department receives dozens of requests each day to make certain repairs. These requests require work to be done in any one of the several residence buildings throughout the Manhattan College campus, and off-campus as well. Naturally, some jobs require more work than others, and are then classified as either "urgent" or "routine." All of the "urgent" jobs take precedence over the ones categorized as "routine," which delays the reparation of procedures that we as Manhattan College residents personally consider to be urgent despite the existence of more serious complications.

Generally, the Physical Plant is informed of specific problems by RAs, faxed reports, and verbal work orders. They seek to solve the problem as soon as possible, and proudly declare that most complications are repaired within 24 hours of the initial report.

What, then, of the infamous toilets and broken windows? Some are suspected acts of vandalism, and thus subject to delay. Schneider explained that suspected acts of vandalism in the dorms take a longer time to be fixed due to additional work that is required before the actual reparation can take place. In these rare situations, the Plant must take pictures, file reports, and do whatever they can to find out who caused the vandalism.

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