(Photo Courtesy of UMass Lowell Connector)
“Angular shot outside of Sheehy Hall on UMass Lowell’s South Campus.”
Robert Saquet
Connector Staff
The severe temperature drop during the first weekend of February was felt by almost everyone in New England, with Mount Washington even reaching a record-breaking windchill of -108 F. However, student residents living in Sheehy Hall got more than just chills that weekend.
On the evening of February 4th at around 5:30 P.M., a pipe burst on the fourth floor disrupted the Saturday evenings of many Sheehy residents, leading to severe flooding and water damage in rooms on all four of the hall’s floors, displacing dozens of students without a place to stay for the night.
The burst is likely to have been caused by the pipes located on the top floor being exposed to the extreme cold that night, causing the flooding to occur.
UMass Lowell has maintained communication with the students affected by the flood updated through regular email updates. However, given the sudden nature of the event and the large amount of people affected, the university seems to have a changing course of action for the students devastated by the event.
One Sheehy resident describes their communications with the university as: “inconsistent, I and several other people determined that we were getting different answers from different people, some claimed that we can stay at the dorm, some people say that we need to wait a week.”
Fortunately, students living in rooms that have been impacted by the pipe burst have been offered reserve, significantly drier dorm rooms in other residence halls on both South and East Campus, along with limited access to their original rooms to move undamaged belongings.
Furthermore, according to an email made by the Office of Residence Life regarding the event, the university “will be prorating the housing cost for students who move to a less expensive housing option during the temporary relocation for the time period that you are in the space.”
Since the event, fans have been running in the halls to help clear out any leftover moisture, but many Sheehy residents report a potent smell coming from the hallways. A Sheehy resident unscathed by the pipe burst still describes the smell of his hallway as “damp and musky, maybe it’s mold. My room isn’t so bad, but it’s really strong in the hallways.”
The same student then went on to state: “considering the amount of money we pay for housing; the school should have better prepared for an event like this.”
During the week following the event, students reported seeing a crew of fluorescent-vested workers present in the dorm’s hallways working on repairing the damage. As far as when the hallways will be completely repaired, the Office of Residence Life provided the following statement to affected students: “We are continuing to assess the time needed to repair the damage in each of the impacted units. We will let you know as soon as possible when you are able to reenter your unit.” Going forward, the university doesn’t appear to be taking any specific precautions so that an event like this doesn’t happen again. According to student testimony, when questioned whether there was any course of action being taken to help prevent this in the future, they responded with: “Not that the school has made us aware of. The most that they told us to do before the event was to close our windows and doors.”
