Every year, students move into Wright State University’s on-campus housing and make it their home for the academic year. After moving out, it falls on the staff to refresh the spaces and get them ready for the next residents. However, as with any other human-run operation, mistakes are sometimes made.
Checking the spaces
Jennifer Attenweiler is the Director of Residence Life. In an interview, she admitted that things are not always perfect.
“We're all human, right? Like we might miss something,” Attenweiler said, showcasing honesty. She went on to describe possible solutions.
Eric Corbitt is the Dean of Students for WSU, and attended the interview with Attenweiler, discussing the areas where housing looks to improve in the future.
“This year, before school started, Jennifer and Katie Manning, the property manager there, President Edwards, and I walked through a lot of the spaces just to see how they were, and things look really good, especially Jacob. But we spotted a few things. We pointed them out, you know, we continue to look for quality improvement,” Corbitt said.
The units they saw were all good, but as Attenweiler said, there are occasions when things are missed. President Edwards and Corbitt are too busy to check every room of each unit, after all, and so is Attenweiler.
Reported housing situations
An anonymous student who resides in the College Park living community came forward with a statement and photographic evidence of their claims.
“I knew my dad would want me to check to make sure everything was okay. At a closer look, two of my outlets either didn’t have outlet covers or were broken. [And] he baseboards were peeling off the wall,” the student said.
Photos of the broken and missing outlet covers were provided. The peeling baseboards can be seen in a later photo, as, unfortunately for this student, this was not the only concern.
“Worst of all, there was a disgusting stain that we found when we moved my bed. It honestly looked like dried puke, and it was thick. If you looked throughout more of the apartment, there were many stains all over the carpet,” the student said.
The image of the “thick” stain also shows the baseboards peeling off the wall. They also claim that a roommate found dirty socks on the floor, but no image was given in support of this.
Fixing problems by working with students
When the student notified housing of these issues, they came in and cleaned the stain. They replaced the outlet covers that were needed before leaving the student’s apartment. So, everything was fixed relatively quickly once the staff were notified, though a stain remained.
“With the number of units we're dealing with, students we're dealing with, yeah, occasionally something does get missed. Our goal is 100%, but sometimes we don't quite get there,” Corbitt said.
The leaders of universities must be honest about their missteps, as Corbitt and Attenweiler were when asked about scenarios like these.
“We’ll, you know, shift and adjust and move the student to another space until we can get their space taken care of. Or, you know, fix it in that moment for them, like whatever we can do to kind of serve them and make sure that we're able to fix the issue, or a miss on our end,” Attenweiler said.
The student was rightfully put off upon moving in and shared their experience as someone with the misfortune of moving into an apartment that was missed in this way. They have since settled in and are comfortable in their apartment.
Attenweiler emphasized housing’s willingness to work with students, and their ability to do this was shown, in part, through the way they helped this student.
