Maintenance Woes

By Nathan Vrablic

Throughout my time here at Point Park University (4 years total), I have noticed the little things around campus, and I was able to ignore them, but this year has been the worst by far. This year I moved into Boulevard Tower A, and from the first moments my roommates and I walked in our suite, there have been numerous problems. In the first two weeks, I made 11 work orders to just get the appliances and the doors to work. Between our doors, bathrooms, multiple lights, needing our AC controller to be installed and then again for them to actually get it working and a set of mysterious tape on our ceiling - it has been a really dumb ride. 

The biggest problems were with our “Room B,” the door into that room was unable to be closed due to the doorframe being cracked almost in half. It took more than a week after reporting for anyone to even come by to look at it. Arianna Kahlil, graduate M.B.A/M.A. with a concentration in advertising and public relations student, said this about her room, "I thought it was odd when I moved in that the door frame was completely shattered and maintenance hadn't realized it happened over the summer. The rooms should be maintained and inspected better than this. The other issues that have risen should be fixed quicker and more efficiently, especially if it’s a minor situation or an emergency for students." 

In the next room, our “Room C,” the residents living there moved in to find damage on the ceiling, a broken light and a mysterious set of masking tape on their ceiling. It took three days for them to even look at the room, and they only came because they were interested in the “mysterious tape.” Schinell Koch, a junior legal studies student has this to say about the whole ordeal, "Personally, I feel like the problems had been solved simple and effective, but then again, it was a much smaller issue. Had the issue been much larger, I don't think it would have been solved as easily."

We later found out by talking to the residents from last year and from talking to the maintenance crew members, all of this was done over the summer by the interns that stayed here. I also learned that after they left, maintenance wasn’t given enough time to correct all of these things.

And this week added another trip on our roller coaster adventure. Our doors malfunctioned, ticking away like an out of tune clock and just not locking for a full two days. Now I don’t know who is in charge of this, but from talking to Public Safety, it was a computer and physical malfunction that led to the doors on certain floors of Boulevard Tower A to be making a clicking sound and being left unlocked. This clicking only lasted from 5 a.m. until 9 a.m. Nov. 10, 2019, but the doors remain unlocked from Nov. 10 to 11. Despite this problem being fixed, being in Boulevard, I have experienced way too many problems with on-campus housing.