On Sept. 6, when Ian Pearson ’11 woke up in his Butterfield B single to go to another day of football practice, he suddenly started getting cold feet. Literally.
“I woke up at 8:30, put down my feet and ‘splash,’ ” Pearson said. “They were submerged in water.”
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, the sinks and showers of two adjacent Butt B bathrooms were clogged up with toilet paper. The faucets and showers were left running. By the time Pearson woke up and turned off the running water, it was too late.
“The hallway was basically a lake,” he said.
Across the hall, the papers and clothes of Residential Advisor Dan Manuyag ’10 were underwater. On the floor below, the tile ceiling in the office of Director of the Health Professions Partnership Initiative Jim Donady, was destroyed. Down in the basement, air ventilation and heating systems were ruined from the dripping water. Back on the second floor, the laptop of Marta Pisarczyk ’11 was also waterlogged, bound never to work again.
To Manuyag, it’s clear what happened.
“Both sinks in each bathroom were on,” he said. “Of course it was intentional.”
In the weeks since the episode, students and the Office of Residential Life have hoped that the culprit or culprits would turn themselves in. But that hasn’t happened and now, unless new information arises, the students of Butt B will be held financially responsible, said Area Coordinator Sharise Brown in a Sept. 21 e-mail to Butt B residents.
“This damage caused countless hours of clean up to rectify,” Brown wrote. “Damages to University property totaled over $6,000.00 which will be billed to the community if the responsible party is not identified.”
The cost, which has now been reduced to $4,592, will mostly cover the machines that were destroyed and quickly replaced in the basement. Students who lost valuables, including Pisarczyk, will not be compensated, Brown indicated.
“This does not even include damages to residents’ personal property,” she wrote. “At least one student lost hir computer due to water damage.”
According to Associate Director of Facilities Management Jeff Miller, the roughly 120 students who reside in Butt B will shoulder costs around $40 if no one steps forward.
“I’m not sure, but it should be about $35 to $40 a student,” he said.
Darren Thomason ’11, who lives on the hall that was flooded, is not too happy about being charged.
“It’s obnoxious,” Thomason said. “If anyone was going to do the flooding intentionally it wouldn’t be us because it affects us the most. I am allergic to mold and this hall was moldy for a week. I shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
This method of resolving these types of situations—called Common Area Damages—has been used for some time, Miller says.
“It’s a real cost that has to be borne by someone,” Miller said. “If the people who live there this year don’t do it, then the people who live there next year will have to. The residents who live in the building are responsible for it.”
Pearson says he will refuse to pay if the University forces him to.
“It’s a public bathroom so I can’t control what happens in it,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to pay for this. They should be paying me.”
Ultimately, though he isn’t happy about the fine, Manuyag says he told his residents that there’s only one route of action.
“I had a meeting with my residents and I told them that it’s their community,” he said. “I said that if they don’t want to pay they’ve got to figure out who did it.”