Falling Ceiling At 8 Prescott Floods Room

Concrete, plaster, wood and water flooded a room in 8 Prescott St. earlier this week in the latest of a series of structural problems that have plagued the freshman dormitory this year.

James F. Volkwein '90 returned to his room Tuesday to find his bed soaked and filled with debris from the ceiling. Volkwein, who four times a day empties a bucket filled with leaks from his ceiling, said that the flood was caused by a broken pipe in the ceiling.

Although Facilities and Maintenance come to the dorm each time a problem is reported, "they only put band-aids on what is a major injury," said Seth Farber '86, proctor for the dorm and a first-year law student. "They are not solving the long-term problems."

Several floodings, electrical shorts and heating problems have arisen from structural problems in the dormitory, Farber said.

Two weeks ago a broken hot water faucet flooded the second floor bathroom. Students temporarily stopped the flooding by weighting down the faucet, said Douglas W. Marx '90.

Emergency maintenance men arrived as water leaked into the first-floor hallway. "They pulled out the pipe and ripped up the bathroom," Marx said. He added that "the bathroom was left a mess" for two weeks until maintenance men attached a new faucet.

Farber, who has spoken to senior freshman advisor Tom Hassan about conditions in the dorm, said he thinks most people at the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) know about the problem. "The fact that they're aware, doesn't mean that they're going to do anything about it," he noted.

Hassan said that he tells the FDO weekly about the problems, but that the College has no formal plans to renovate the building. "Ultimately [the renovation] is a decision of the Dean [of Freshmen Henry C. Moses] with the physical plant," Hassan said.

"It [the dorm] obviously needs to be renovated," Farber said. "Everyone's aware in general that something needs to be done, but opinions differ about what to do and when to do it."