Many students in the Quadrangle College Houses have been facing icy mornings recently.
Though heaters were installed in the Fisher-Hassenfeld, Spruce and Ware College House bathrooms in 2002, several bathrooms still frequently lack both heat and hot water.
College freshman Lauren Rosenberg said she has to deal with frigid shower experiences in the morning.
"It's irresponsible for the school not to have hot water during the day for us and not to have someone fix it," she said. "Our heater is broken, too. Girls are coming down from other floors, to our bathroom, hoping to get hot water."
But Betsy Robinson, director of Facilities Services in the Locust Walk area, said Rosenberg's experience is not necessarily common.
"The problems are not an overall occurrence, but are isolated incidents," she said.
Fisher-Hassenfeld Residential Adviser and College senior Ed Youngstrom said he has received complaints from students in his hall about the lack of heat and hot water in the bathrooms.
Youngstrom was told by maintenance that the lack of hot water was due to the high volume of usage.
The explanation did not do much to satisfy College freshman Nisha Chhabra, who lives on Youngstrom's hall.
"When I take a morning shower, the water is always cold, it's freezing," Chhabra said. "There was also cold air blowing out of the heater for two days."
Chhabra also said she wonders why it is happening now. "During the fall semester, I did not have a lack of hot water," she said.
Jane Rogers, the house dean of Fisher-Hassenfeld, said that she thought the weather could be to blame for the problem.
"I think it's fair to say this winter has been the coldest," Rogers said. "I'm only speculating, but the heating problems may be a result of the system going through its first really cold winter."
Rogers added that she thinks there have been fewer problems this year than in the past. Still, she has received numerous complaints of slow water return and no heat in the bathrooms.
Maintenance personnel work "extremely hard to try and correct the problems," Rogers said. "For the moment that keeps them as busy as they can be, and that's probably why they haven't told us why exactly it is occurring."
The maintenance call center receives approximately 1,000 calls and 700 e-mails a week.
