Residential maintenance causes issues on campus
By Dan Dick | Opinion Editor
Miscommunication between residents of the campus apartments, resident assistants and the Physical Plant seems to be causing confusion. Some residents at the campus apartments will not call the Physical Plant for maintenance because they do not believe their grievances will be resolved.
Sophomore Heather Campbell lives at the campus apartments and expressed her lack of faith in the Physical Plant.
“We won’t call maintenance because the RAs tell us that nine times out of 10 they won’t come anyway,” she said.
Senior Joanna Luisi, a resident assistant at the University of Indianapolis, said there is a communication problem between residents and RAs, and that the Physical Plant is being blamed unfairly.
“If we fix the communication in the apartments, then it’s entirely up to maintenance,” she said.
Luisi also explained that the RAs never told residents to withhold knowledge of property damage.
“We had a meeting at the beginning of this semester and basically we told them that if they had a problem with anything that could be trouble-shooted on their own—like checking the chain in the toilet or putting Drano down the tub on their own—and then contact us, that would be the best way,” Luisi said.
Ken Piepenbrink, Physical Plant director, said menial tasks are best handled by residents.
“We prefer that students look and see if it is something they can take care of,” he said about the everyday household problems.
He also said that the students are responsible for informing the RAs, who in turn assess whether the problem warrants contacting the maintenance staff.
“The reason we do that—we like to go through one person or through the RA or the dorm director—is because we want them to make sure it really is an issue before we are just called,” Piepenbrink said. “If every student or professor or staff member on campus could just blanket call us, our phones would just be going off the hook.”
Not all residents of the campus apartments believe that the Physical Plant has been negligent in the duties. Sophomore Olivia Russell is impressed by their attention towards routine campus maintenance. She said that she has seen physical plant workers repairing damage, even when it had not been formally reported.
“We haven’t really had much to report, she said. “But in general it has been pretty good.”
