Residents work to improve Harrison elevators

In response to prolonged elevator delays, Harrison College House residents and staff have drafted a petition urging Penn President Amy Gutmann and other relevant administrators to resolve what the petition calls a “serious problem that threatens the health, safety and academic well-being” of residents.

Due to renovations, only three of the house’s four elevators are currently serving the over-800 residents. The petition emphasized that often one or more of these are also out of service.

According to Harrison College House Dean Frank Pellicone, the elevators are “a concern to all [residents].”

“It’s discouraging to hear how people are dissatisfied with living here — given all the work we do to create a sense of community — because of the elevators, something beyond our control,” he said.

While Pellicone was not directly involved with the petition, he “encouraged residents to take action and voice their concerns,” 17th-floor Residential Advisor and College senior Michelle Nguyen recalled.

College sophomore Priscilla Yeung, who lives on the ninth floor, described the elevators as “unpredictable” and said she often takes the stairs.

But stairs are not an option for College sophomore Grace Wang, who lives on the 18th floor.

On Halloween weekend, Wang said her elevator ride lasted 20 minutes. “It stopped on every floor, opened the doors, paused and creaked shut again,” she said.

Written by several Harrison Graduate Advisors and RAs, the petition aims to designate a specific individual who would be held accountable for addressing elevator concerns.

Part of the problem is that “[Harrison’s] doing everything it can to fix the problem,” said third-year Penn Law student and Harrison GA Justin Rodriguez, who helped co-author the petition, “but there’s a maze of other administrative offices and people responsible who can easily shift the responsibility to someone else.”

The petition also pressed for renovations to be rescheduled for this summer in order to maximize the number of functioning elevators during the academic year.

Finally, the petition called for Penn to reevaluate its contract with its current elevator service provider. Rodriguez said the company sometimes requires up to 12 hours to perform “piecemeal patchwork.”

“We feel like, for whatever reason, the University seems to be locked into the contract,” he said, “so there is no incentive for them to do a better job.”

Petition co-author, 13th-floor RA and College junior Mark Pan called the efforts to improve the elevators “much more grassroots than other movements on campus because we’re doing this as residents.”

According to Facilities and Real Estate Services Project Manager David Dunn, facilities recognizes “the inconvenience caused during these projects and expedited the schedule to complete the project with as minimal downtime as possible, while also planning for all four elevators to be operational at both Move-In and Move-Out periods.”

Dunn specified that renovations will include “the installation of computerized microprocessor elevator dispatching controllers [that] will enable the cars to respond to calls much more efficiently.”

He added that 15 years have elapsed since the 40-year-old elevators have undergone any major renovations.

Dunn — along with Housing Director Doug Berger and Harrison Faculty Master Michael Gamer—will be at a meeting Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the building’s mezzanine. All residents are invited to attend and voice their concerns or questions regarding the elevator situation.

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