The elevators in the East Residence Hall have been in and out of service since Sept. 19, causing a variety of problems for residents.
Named after Dr. J. Keith and Angela Motley, the East and West Residence Halls are home to more than 1,000 first-year students. The East Residence Hall has three main elevators, which can lead to complications when even one is out of service. While it may sound like a minor inconvenience to some, residents claim it’s a much larger issue.
When the elevators are nonfunctional, students in the residence halls are forced to take the stairs. If a student leaves their room even a minute late, they could miss the elevator and have to wait for up to 10 minutes for the next one to reach their floor. This is especially difficult for students on the higher floors, as the East and West Residence Halls have 12 and eight floors, respectively. Damian Adilaj, a student living in the West Residence Hall, detailed having to wake up and leave earlier for class because he knows he “might have to wait forever for the elevator.”
The Office of Housing and Residential Life has posted signs telling residents to limit the capacity to eight people a time in the elevator, in addition to advising students to leave their dorms early to account for elevator outages. Due to the number of residents who rely on the elevators, however, students have complained about the lack of space and difficulty of limiting elevator usage.
“Sometimes the line is so long that it’s faster to take the stairs, or the elevator is packed and I can’t even squeeze in,” said Adilaj, is affected when visiting friends in the East hall, despite living in West. “Even when they’re working, they get super crowded during busy times, like mornings, or late at night when everyone’s coming back.”
Overcrowding issues can also pose an accessibility issue for disabled students living in the residence halls. Students who use mobility aids like crutches, walkers and wheelchairs, as well as students with service animals, often need to wait even longer for an elevator that has the room for them.
Adilaj said that the West Residence Hall is also vulnerable to elevator issues, although they are less frequent. “The elevators in my residential hall usually work fine, but every couple weeks something goes wrong. It’s not like they’re broken every day, but it happens often enough that it’s annoying,” he said.
For the university to install additional elevators, it would take months of construction, require a large sum of money and create more noise and less space, affecting elevator traffic and student well-being. The OHRL has reiterated that the malfunctioning is mostly due to student misuse; residents are encouraged to adhere to the rules posted inside and outside of the elevators to prevent elevator outages.
