After around a year of repairs, the South Hall elevator is working as of Oct. 28.
A Catalyst article reported when the elevator first stopped working last year that “around 3 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 6, a control valve in a janitorial closet on the fourth floor of South Hall failed, causing water to flood down the four floors through the elevator shaft. Water pooled at the bottom of the shaft and set off a nearby fire panel.”
According to Jordan Purvis, South Hall Residential Life Coordinator (RLC), campus safety caught the leak on CCTV at the time of the breakdown and an emergency maintenance crew fixed it after 45 minutes. The ceiling panels and a wall of one of the rooms on the fourth floor were damaged by the water.
The Campus Energy and Utilities department of the Facilities Services had been working with a local elevator service company since the breakdown, but was slowed by outside factors.
“Earlier this year we had some shipping delays, whether it was because of tariffs or anything else. Some parts of the elevator had to be custom made and that also delayed the repair,” said Trevez Bridgewater, the current South Hall RLC.
A broken elevator in one of the most populated dormitories on campus was an accessibility concern for many returning students as they made their housing decisions. Messages about the lack of elevator service circulated among the students who were worried about getting their belongings to the upper floors without a general need for mobility assistance on Yik Yak, an anonymous social media platform for students.
Information about the elevator was posted on the Facilities’ Service Interruptions and Outages webpage, and South Hall’s residents received direct messages from the RLC on the repair process.
The Office of Accessibility Resources has been able to assist students with permanent and temporary mobility issues.
“If a student is in an area that is not accessible, and they need an accessible space, we work with the Office of Housing to review options and move students into a space that is accessible,” said Sara Rotunno, director of Accessibility Resources. “We would also work with faculty and the Registrar’s Office if we were navigating an access need and an elevator was out in an academic building.”
The Accessibility Resources office could not provide the exact number of students with either permanent or temporary mobility issues. According to Rotunno, the office worked with 121 students with permanent conditions and 24 students with temporary conditions during the 2024-2025 school year.