Students complained about dorm rooms being dirty when they arrived on Move-In Day.
According to Hayward Guenard, director of Housing and Residence Life, residence halls should not be dirty at move-in time, as they are cleaned after the spring semester and again after summer conferences.
With 1,410 students living on-campus, Nicholls is pushing to maximum capacity of residents.
Between summer conferences and students arriving early, it’s possible for rooms to be overlooked, according to Guenard.
“From my indications, we had fewer issues this year than we had in previous years,” Guenard said.
He also said that though there have been fewer reports of unclean rooms, it does not diminish the few that have occurred.
“The only thing we can do to remedy that is to address the room, clean it and apologize,” Guenard said.
Guenard also said that the eyes and ears of the residence halls are the student workers and Resident Assistants.
“You may see something if you were a student staff member that another student staff member maybe would not recognize. It is about training our staff and keeping those channels open, but also letting students know that when there is an issue, we have a process to report those and get them addressed,” said Guenard.
Alisha Dufrene, a petroleum production and safety management senior from Cut Off, lived in a moldy apartment in the Brady complex last year for almost three months before she was allowed to switch rooms.
Dufrene noticed dark spots in her bathroom and on her ceiling and called to have it cleaned, but it kept coming back. It was not until the day her bedroom was soaked and her flooring buckled that she realized it was a more serious problem.
“I filed numerous complaints about stuff growing on my ceilings. One night I woke up, and my floor was soaked and my flooring was buckled,” Dufrene said.
Dufrene said the shower of her upstairs neighbor was not draining properly and was leaking water into Dufrene’s apartment. She was moved into a new apartment a month later.
“Even though there was mold growing in my bathroom and bedroom, and they knew that water from upstairs was continually flowing into my walls and onto my floor, they still hadn’t moved me for a month,” Dufrene said.
A ten-year plan is in place to ensure that each residence hall receives the attention it needs. This past summer, Millet and two Brady buildings were paid extra attention with fresh paint and a more thorough cleaning.
“The goal is that every five years, our buildings are being cycled through and getting completely repainted,” Guenard said.
This summer, every room in Millet Hall had its carpets steam cleaned, as well as the furniture in the lobby of Ellender Hall.
Guenard said there are some housing projects that are still in progress. The tiles in the laundry room of Ellender Hall are being replaced, but new ceramic tiles are currently on back order. Another large project on the agenda is the mulching of flowerbeds around all the residence halls.
Nicholls also plans to start a $3.7 million project to refurbish Ellender Hall, one of the older residence halls, in December.