new group 5 Mold in The Dorms

Dear Office of Environmental Health and Safety,
I understand that a little mold is going to be in most places when living in old, poorly ventilated buildings. In fact, before moving into my freshmen dorm room I read on the University’s Housing Website “mold is everywhere.” This week my roommate and I found out that “everywhere” meant every inch of our dorm room. We spotted the first signs of it about three weeks ago in one of our closets after that we immediately informed the RA’s on call who submitted a work order for us. The next day we were told to call your office, which we promptly did. We were asked to leave a message, a week passed and we hadn’t heard anything about it so we called a second time once again having to leave a message. After another week we called one more time and were informed that the only person who could speak to us about our problem was out of town and would not be back until Friday. However this was the Friday of Fall Break and both my roommate and I had long standing plans to go to our hometowns and visit family, so we once again left a message hoping for the best. By the time we came back from Fall Break, our room reeked of mold and we now had a much bigger problem than just a little patch growing in the closest. Little did we know the problems that lay before us due to this “little” mold problem. After experiencing a stressful day of moving, homework and class I’ve realized that you may not have the best grasp on how difficult it is for students to deal with these problems. Simple solutions to easily fixable problems would make the process of dealing with mold infestations much easier for all of those involved; such as having EHS team up with UA housing to provided students with a place to move all of their belongings to and a bed to sleep in while the mold is killed, and always having someone in the EHS office to take students calls about mold issues.
Receiving a phone call informing you to move everything out of your room can cause a lot of stress because then the question is where am I going to put my belongings and how long it would it need to be there. For me, it was about three hours, two of which I was supposed to be in class, but ended up not going because I had to put my things in different friends rooms until we finally found an empty room on the bottom floor of our dorm. This stressful situation could have easily been avoided if EHS could find a way to team up with UA Housing. I know that EHS and housing are two very different departments of the University however in serious circumstances the need for both of them in a hurry overlaps. If Housing could make EHS aware of empty rooms around campus that students could sleep in for however long it takes for the mold to be cleaned up, then EHS would be able to instantaneously give the students a place to move their things into. It may seem as though this may not be a huge time savor for students in this situation but for us it would have cut almost an hour off of our moving time and I could have made it to at least one of my classes instead of having to miss both of them. Also giving students a place right away insures that all of their belongings are with them at all times. During the time my room was being cleaned I had things located in two friends’ rooms and an empty room in Parker-Adams that had to remain locked until we got our stuff out to move back while we stayed in a room at Byrd Hall with only an overnight bag and some bedding.
To reduce the stress of EHS and the students with the mold problems one thing EHS could have is someone there at all times during the workday to be able to take students phone calls. These jobs wouldn’t even need to be done by a professional or an expert on mold; it could easily be a work-study job. Basically, the only thing that would need to happen is a small amount of training. The workers should be given a set of questions such as where is the mold located, what does it look like, and have either roommates been unexplainably sick in the past week or so. Based on the caller’s answers to these questions, the worker should gauge how severe the problem is and deal with it accordingly. If it is only a slight problem, it could only be a matter of setting a day and time to come spray the contaminated area however if it is a severe case they could put the called in touch with someone on a higher level and they could get the problem taken care of quickly. Not only would this system be more efficient for EHS, it would create more work-study jobs and make students with mold problems feel as though they are getting help for a problem that often causes people to panic.
Although sending out emails and posting signs around the resident’s halls is a good prevention tool, it does not help students once mold is already growing in their dorm rooms. This fall it seems to be popping up everywhere, and I personally know one other person who was also forced to move out of her room on short notice and four others who have mold growing and blowing out of their air conditioning vents and that can really make someone sick. It seems to be that only the most severe cases get taken care of quickly and they aren’t even taken care of efficiently. If EHS were to have someone to answer phone calls all day then maybe they could attack mold problems when they are first reported, not once it’s so bad students have to evacuate their rooms. This would make it so only in extreme cases are students forced out of their rooms and only in extreme cases where EHS would need to get housing involved, which is why it is such a good idea for the two to team up. It would be much faster for the students and for EHS because the students could be moved out in a timely manor.