Residents of Jones Tower have experienced a myriad of maintenance issues in the on-campus dorm. Credit: Ris Twigg | Lantern File Photo
Students residing in Jones Tower who have dealt with water issues in the fall might have felt deja vu after waking up with no water earlier this month.
Jones Tower residents found themselves the morning of Feb. 13 without water when showers and sinks were not functioning for around three hours without any notice from Ohio State. This outage follows other problems continually experienced by students, including scalding or cold temperatures and leaks.
Sia Sindhwani, a first-year in data analytics, said ninth floor residents thought a pipe burst on their floor because showers weren’t turning on, and sinks weren’t letting out water on the third floor. Though the issue was resolved within hours, Sindhwani said there were no updates from the university about the outage or its cause.
“At least some communication would be nice, because I know that when everybody that I know here has been talking about it, people have been like ‘Oh, we had no idea this was even going on,’” Sindhwani said.
University spokesperson Dave Isaacs said in an email a student — for reasons unknown — had broken a water valve in his or her room for the Feb. 13 incident.
“In order to fix the problem, crews had to shut off the water to a few rooms overnight,” Isaacs said. “Everything was back up and running properly early that morning.”
Neither Sindhwani nor Sarah Al-Hashemi, a third-year in public health and Jones Tower resident, said she was notified that the outage was fixed.
Elizabeth Miller, a third-year in finance and Jones Tower resident, said she was only able to wash her hands when those in neighboring dorms were not using their showers earlier in the semester.
“If I can hear the water running, like someone’s taking a shower near me, and I turn on the hot water, it’s scalding hot,” Miller said. “I can’t keep my hands under it, so I wash my hands in cold water.”
Al-Hashemi said the water from her bathroom sink is always scalding, regardless of the position of the faucet handles. She said she first experienced a ceiling leak in her bathroom in November 2022 that took several trips from maintenance to fix. She’s had several leaks since then.
“It completely ruined my stuff,” Al-Hashemi said. “My makeup and skincare and everything was on that sink. My carpet was completely drenched, my towel, stuff like that. It’s definitely a frustrating situation.”
Isaacs said there were problems earlier in the semester with the domestic hot water system caused by a pump failure in the building, and the issue has been resolved.
“That pump has been replaced, and we haven’t received any reports for more than two weeks,” Isaacs said. “There were a few (not very many) service requests for miscellaneous rooms about a lack of hot water, but those were resolved by replacing shower valve components.”
However, Sindhwani and Al-Hashemi said there is still an issue with hot water.
In response to residents’ recent complaints, Isaacs said any student with maintenance or custodial service needs should report the issue through Service2Facilities.
