Student groups frustrated by moldy practice rooms

“When I walked into the room, I saw that [the mold] was on the couches, on our piano and the baseboards of the walls,” Tigerlilies president Miriam Marek ’10 said. “We’re singers, so we can’t have mold in our room … It would have been terrible during auditions for anyone with allergies ... I had no idea the damage would be so extensive.”

While Marek and the rest of the Tigerlilies were shocked to find mold in their room, groups with rehearsal spaces in Bloomberg Hall were notified by the Facilities Department earlier this summer after mold was found in rooms 046 to 073 in the Bloomberg basement on Aug. 19.

The cause of the mold was a combination of “isolated water damage … with energy-saving efforts,” University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said. To reduce energy expenditure, the University cut down the amount of heat circulation in unoccupied buildings during the summer. The air-circulation system allowed moisture levels to persist in the basement during a period of heavy rainfall, contributing to mold growth. “Energy-saving initiatives helped moisture conditions continue to develop mold,” Cliatt said, adding that the mold was contained to one portion of the basement and did not contaminate the building’s residential floors.

Unlike the basement in Bloomberg, the basement in Henry does not have an air-circulation system. There, the mold was caused by moisture seeping through concrete walls, Cliatt said. Since neither of the two basements had humidity sensors, the mold grew undetected until it was discovered by maintenance checks or by returning students.

“The timing is the worst part,” Marek said of the damage. “[This is the] week when we spend the most time in our room during the entire year. We need to have our own space and share the Tigerlily experience.”

The Facilities Department is working with environmental consultants to remedy the damage, but there are no firm projections for when the rooms will be reopened. Groups will have to use other spaces at least until next week, Cliatt said.

Items with hard surfaces, such as tables and lamps, were cleaned and stored in trailers off campus.

The Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students “has been particularly helpful [in] helping me contact everyone in college offices and finding spaces,” Marek said.

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Still, the hired contractors cannot clean everything, and Cliatt said it was unlikely the University would be able to salvage all of the damaged items. “We had a lot of furniture, couches and chairs that we’ve collected over the years: personal Tigerlilies items, posters to commemorate tours, CDs for the group, T-shirts for the group, memorabilia collected over the 40 years,” Marek said. “A great deal of that has been lost.”

Though isolated cases of mold are not uncommon on campus, there were more incidences of mold this summer than in previous years because of the “uncharacteristically high moisture content,” Cliatt said.

To avoid this problem in the future, the University is considering installing humidity sensors around campus.