First-year students face plumbing and water struggles in the first weeks of fall 2024. Photo by Lauren Jindrich.

ERIKA KOVACH | STAFF REPORTER | ekovach@butler.edu 

While many buildings on Butler’s campus are plagued with plumbing and construction issues, more frequent problems in the first-year dorm buildings Residential College (ResCo) and Irvington House have caused many students to express concerns this year. 

ResCo has battled with plumbing issues over the years, with many individuals reporting concerns after returning from winter break last year. Students at the time were told in an email from Residence Life that the issues were due to “drastic changes in temperature over the last few days,” but new problems have arisen in the new academic year. 

Sophomore art history major Tessa Specchio lives on the first floor of ResCo. She said a few weeks ago her bathroom flooded twice within two days.

“The first time it happened, it was deemed as a nonemergency,” Specchio said. “It was decided that it fixed itself, and then it happened again 24-ish hours later.”

Specchio said that just two hours before her bathroom flooded, a dorm down the hallway experienced flooding throughout their entire suite.

After the flooding stopped in her bathroom, Specchio was left to clean both rust and sewage off the floor and take care of her personal belongings. 

“I think in the future there should be someone in the building specifically in charge of plumbing, seeing as this is an ongoing issue,” Specchio said. “It seems really unfair that the RAs — who are students — are expected to figure out what to do about plumbing issues in the middle of the night.”

First-year PP1 pre-pharmacy major Jolie Fallis shared a similar experience, as the sinks in her room overflowed on the second day of school. 

“[Maintenance] pulled out a tampon from the sink, from the pipes,” Fallis said. “[The maintenance worker] said, ‘This one’s been in here for so long, but it hasn’t caused any problems because of summer.’”

Due to this clog, maintenance drilled holes in Fallis’s wall on the second day of school, an issue that was not resolved until ten days later on Sept. 8. Throughout the process of getting the holes fixed, Fallis and her RA filed three different work orders to correct different colored paneling and poor plastering jobs.

“I couldn’t really unpack anything, so I ended up just moving my desk to the side,” Fallis said. “They still [needed to] access the wall, but I was like, ‘I need to unpack my stuff. I can’t just wait forever.’”

Manager of facilities & operations John Lacheta said that clogs and backups tend to occur with items that can’t actually be flushed. 

“Even though wipes are listed as flushable, they wreak havoc on plumbing systems and should never be flushed down any plumbing system,” Lacheta said. 

Similar issues have occurred in the building, whether in the showers, toilets or sinks. Lacheta said all the plumbing eventually flows together into the same pipes in the building. 

Despite reports of sewage leaks from ResCo spilling into the space between ResCo and Fairview on YikYak, Lacheta said this is not the case. 

“To resolve the issues mentioned, there are cleanouts on the exterior of the building that can be used to clear the clogs,” Lacheta said.

First-year students living in Irvington are also experiencing long-term issues with the water and plumbing in their building. 

First-year elementary education major Clara Williams said that since coming to campus, the water to the showers, sinks and toilets had been turned off at random times throughout the building with little explanation.

“[Residence Life] is very communicative on email [about shut-offs], but I don’t really see a ton of signs about it around,” Williams said. “I only really see them in the main areas, but they’re actually kind of hard to spot because they’re just on a white sheet of paper with Arial Font.”

Despite doing their best to let students know when the water will be turned off, the inconsistency has led to inconvenience for many students. 

Williams said that Residence Life often fails to notify students when the water is turned back on, and it’s often turned off at inconvenient times — leaving her to resort to walking to ResCo for bathroom space. 

“Thankfully, I have my twin brother who lives in ResCo,” Williams said. “So from time to time, I’m like, ‘Parker, I gotta brush my teeth.’”

Lacheta said that at this time, the work in Irvington with water shut-offs has been completed. 

“The issue was involving a failed valve which caused too much hot water to mix with cold water,” Lacheta said. “[This] caused the ‘cold water’ faucets to be lukewarm.”

While these issues seem to spread around campus, students are sympathetic to the time and work put into such problems. 

“I just wish they would make these things the most convenient time for everyone,” Williams said. “I do feel a little bad, because [maintenance is] working on it, and [those times] wouldn’t be as convenient for them. But at the same time, we are consumers and we are the people living there.”

Students still experiencing plumbing issues can file work orders through the housing portal so campus operations can address them.