Wishing for flood-free dorms

While the past week's onslaught of rain and gloomy skies was nothing compared to Noah's 40 days and 40 nights of precipitation, it still got a bit depressing after awhile. Gentle morning mists greeted those of us with 9 a.m. lectures and precepts and covered everything in a fine web of wetness. By midday, those mists had turned into vertical, horizontal and diagonal heavy rains, rendering any umbrella of any size utterly useless. Rains fell through the night, creating an invisible downpour that soaked everything and everyone. In between raindrops, people ran from building to building, treading through puddles and lakes of dead leaves, soggy paper and sludge. Dry clothes simply were not an option.

Our personal Niagara Falls, however, wasn't confined to the great outdoors. It could be found inside, in buildings with roofs and closed windows.

This past week, the Forbes addition underwent its second great flooding within a month. While the rain may or may not have contributed, the bathroom on the fourth floor certainly played its role: easily observable were the torn ceilings, dripping walls and musty carpeting on the two floors beneath it. People knocked on doors to borrow trashcans to use as water collection bins. In their bedrooms, the lucky simply unplugged laptops, lamps, fans, radios and anything else that relied on electricity. The less fortunate did all of the above and shoved wet beds, dressers, closest and refrigerators to the opposite corners of their room to make way for more gushing waterfalls. Public Safety and maintenance looked less than thrilled as drop by drop, bathroom water plopped onto their hats and screwdrivers. When asked how he was doing, the plumber on call merely grunted and trudged away.

Indoor rains are not, however, limited only to Forbes. They can be found in certain areas of Butler College and in unlucky rooms in Little Hall. One particular Little room that sits underneath a women's bathroom serves as a fine example. Everyday last year, a small brown bulge on a bedroom ceiling grew larger and larger, until the occupants of the room decided to duct tape the bulge and contain it. Even then, the bulge could not be contained. It finally exploded one day, dumping odorous liquids all over a white-sheeted bed. Public Safety and maintenance were not terribly happy during this flooding either. Funnily enough, this room suffered from leakage problems the previous year and is still suffering from them this year.

Sometimes flooding is simply inevitable and must be dealt with accordingly. But the fact that these events repeatedly occur ought to induce some scratching of heads. While ceilings and walls can be painted over and whitewashed to hide previous and future brown stains, they cannot prevent poor plumbing or water damage. Sometimes, a new bathroom system with pipes must be installed. Other times, a ceiling may have to actually be replaced not just for looks but to prevent a fourth floor flooding from making its way to the basement. On rare occasions, it may simply be most efficient to raze a building and replace it with a fully functional (and better looking) one.

I am not suggesting for the University to replace every single wall and ceiling that's ever endured some form of water damage. Flooding can sometimes be a onetime event. But in areas where flooding is a common enough phenomenon to the point where plumbers and residents are on a first-name basis, effective renovation must be done. The Housing Office ought to start compiling and publishing statistics on water damage and other relevant housing issues as they do for fire safety issues. The rationale behind selecting certain dormitories for renovation or rebuilding over other dormitories might actually become clearer and more logical. In the span of a student's short four-year lifetimes, one flooding might be ignored but repeated floodings cannot and should not be ignored. Anna Huang is an ORFE major from Westlake, Ohio. She can be reached at ajh@princeton.edu.