CABLE, CONSTRUCTION AND FOOD FIT ONLY FOR CRIMINALS

Lucas Gebhart

Sports Editor

Turner Hall is worse than it looks. The building itself looks like it is about ready fall over if the wind blows too hard, but living inside of Turner is an even worse experience than looking at the building.

I have lived in Turner for the past two semesters and let me just say this, housing could not care less about its residents.

My first question is what genius decided it was a good idea to do renovations to the floors right when the semester started? I live on the  fourth floor and my floor was under construction from October to February. Worse yet, they didn’t even finish the renovations. The walls by the bathrooms are still unfinished and there is mold growing on the wall leading to the floor. How is that sanitary?

The renovations were the most frustrating part of living here. Student employees of the university would come up to our floor and “work,” on your floor. Every time I walked by, these “workers” were either playing on their phone while sitting on the couches or half-heartedly drilling planks of wood into the wall, that not only looked bad, but had poor craftsmanship. Why not pay a contractor to come in and finish the job in a weekend? Yeah, it would cost more, but the floor would look better, and the job would be done in a reasonable amount of time. Best yet, students wouldn’t be living in a construction zone for months on end.

The new carpet is not redone, it was re-layed. They did not tear the old carpet out and put the new one in, they simply stapled new carpet over the old.

They laid about 15 squares of red carpet over the old gray carpet and left it there for weeks. Housing claimed it was because they had to order more carpet and it was not in yet.
Here is my question, why in the world did you start laying carpet when you knew you did not have enough carpet to finish the job?

I am not a fashion expert, but even I know that if you lay a red carpet over a gray carpet, it will not look good. So if you know it won’t look good leaving the carpet unfinished, and you know you don’t have enough carpet to fully re-lay the entire floor, why did you start? 

These renovations were the floor gossip for months on end. I had multiple residents remark to me that they could have had the entire floor done in a weekend with the help of their father.

I emailed housing about this issue stating my frustrations and not surprisingly it was to no avail. I met with a housing employee who spewed verbal garbage that they were taught in training to pass off as resolving an issue.

I was promised change and not surprisingly no change was to come.

That leads me into my next question, does housing actually care about its residents? Housing officials give off this impression that they would take a bullet for their residents. That is more fake than the food at Turner Hall.

My cable was out for over a month and this was during a span of time where I was out of town for 14 days over four weeks.

I’m not dumb, I knew March Madness was a little more than a month away and I knew that Housing simply did not care if my cable worked or not. I knew they would not be able to fix the cable in time for a tournament unless I told them then; then being about halfway through February.

I told three different people who work at the desk in the Turner lobby, one of which claimed to have emailed a higher-up about the issue. A week passed and my cable was still out and no effort to my knowledge was made to fix it. The second time I told somebody about the issue, they were helpful and nice about the problem, personally calling the higher-up who claimed they did not know about the issue.

I already told one of your employees about this, who claimed to have told you. So  how can you not know? I was asked if I had filled out a maintenance request. I did not, but I was told by a desk employee that they would fill one out for me. I was promised the issues would be fixed — another empty promise.

After that, I took matters into my own hands. In addition to telling a third person at the desk that my cable was still out, I personally emailed the building director about the issue, again explaining my frustrations with what seemed to be a simple task.   

Finally, after telling three different employees, and emailing their boss, my cable was fixed. I really do feel like I don’t ask for much. When my cable goes out, is it too much to ask that it be fixed? If housing actually cared about its residents, then my cable would have been fixed the first time I told them about the issue, not over a month later.

Another logical thing housing could do to show it actually cares about its residents is to turn off the heater when it is hot outside. This isn’t rocket science, when it is over 70 degrees outside, maybe the heater should be off. But guess what was on a couple weeks ago when we had consecutive days of warm temperatures? Multiple residents had to complain before they would do something that is simple common sense; when it is hot outside, turn off the heater. When it gets cold again, guess what? You can turn it back on, it’s only a switch. Common sense is a beautiful thing, unfortunately for the residents of Turner, it appears that Housing is haunted of that luxury.

My third question has little to do with Housing, but more to do with the dining options that Turner provides. Let me put this plain and simple, the food here sucks.

One of my friends was sick for close to a week after eating at Turner.

Not only will this food knock you out of class for a week, but in my opinion significant contributes to the freshmen 15.

Yeah, there’s a salad bar, but the spinach and other vegetables there don’t even taste like vegetables. For weeks on end, the broccoli from the main line tasted salty. How in the world does broccoli taste salty? Nothing good has ever come from the main line, the most comparable food source I can currently think of is prison food. The grill is never a healthy option. If I am going to eat a cheese burger, I want it to taste good because I know that it is not healthy. At Turner dining hall, neither is an option. The only option you are sometimes left with is to make a sandwich with old meat and cheese that has been sitting in the inferno housing has created with its refusal to turn the heat down. 

I have talked to some Housing employees about their experience. From what I have gathered, their account of what it has been like working for this dreadful organization has been worse than my living experience. Housing does not care about its employees and does not care about its residents and then wonder why I am moving off-campus next semester.