The New Ross Hall: Continual Issues with Butler Terrace

Cassandra Stec | cmstec@butler.edu

Grace Reynolds | greynolds@butler.edu

Upon the end of their second year, soon-to-be juniors are presented with several choices for their last required year of on-campus housing. One of those options is Butler Terrace or, as students call it, BT. The dorm is located just off-campus in the surrounding neighborhood and features a small parking lot covered by a carport sandwiched between two apartment buildings. The apartments cater exclusively to groups of three students per unit and each apartment features vastly different amenities–some have carpeted rooms while others are solely wood or tiled floors.

While the apartments look like typical university housing that would be comparable to University Terrace or South Campus Apartments in terms of aesthetics, the current and past residents of BT have dealt with a slew of problems from theft and spotty Wi-Fi to inadequate maintenance and cleanliness issues resulting in illness.

Austyne Taylor, a senior biomedical engineering and computer science major, has lived in BT for the past two years. She chose to live in BT as it was the most cost-effective choice for her two roommates and her. Two weeks ago, both her and another student had their car’s catalytic converters stolen.

“I turned on my car and it sounded like a monster truck, it was loud,” Taylor said. “I immediately called my dad and he told me to look under my car; there was a giant hole. I went through BUPD [Butler University Police Department] and they started a case. I was expecting BUPD to send an email to BT residents letting everyone know, but we never got anything so I took it upon myself to let everyone know.”

Taylor has noticed during her two years at BT that there is a slew of safety issues both around and within the apartments.

There have been instances where the door leading from outside the building to the hallways where the apartments are located does not close properly, allowing anyone access to the inner corridors of the building. Additionally, there have been instances of the hallway lighting malfunctioning, leaving students in darkness as they attempt to get to their apartments. There are also issues with lighting outside the buildings, especially around the carport parking area. Besides issues with the doors and lighting, there are no blue lights–universally recognized safety poles used to call campus police–anywhere near BT. With winter weather, Taylor also noticed that BT has never been salted or plowed since she has resided there–the first time the sidewalks were salted was this past Friday–which results in large swaths of ice on both the sidewalks and in the parking lot. She has had to invest in ice cleats to avoid slipping and injuring herself on her way to class.

Though the security and safety issues presented above are concerning, what has many BT residents wary is the lack of security cameras. There are no security cameras at BT, it is the only parking lot or residence hall without exterior security cameras.

Taylor also cites Wi-Fi as a main issue that she has experienced at BT. Some rooms in her apartment get an adequate Wi-Fi signal while others are ‘dead zones’ and offer zero reliability or connectivity. Butler switched BT from Spectrum Wi-Fi to the campus-wide Wi-Fi service in late August, after the academic year had begun. This switch has led to a variety of issues for students at BT.

“I contacted IT and they said they wanted to try to move the access point in the building,” Taylor said. “Which makes sense, but they had to ask facilities for a floor plan of the building. Facilities said they don’t have that. So I had to draw a floor plan of the building. Now the issue is that facilities says no one wants to help. They said, maybe we’ll get it done by spring break.”

The conversations between IT and facilities as well as the lack of response led Taylor to contact the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Butler, Peter Williams. Only after Williams was contacted did Taylor’s Wi-Fi situation begin to make headway. Even then, since there are still issues with facilities, Taylor has had to ask her parents to assist her with attempting to contact people and resolve this issue she has had since last August.

In addition to the security and Wi-Fi issues, Taylor and her roommates have had numerous issues with the amenities of their apartment as well as attempting to get facilities help. Their apartment features large windows with up to three or four separate small sets of blinds to cover the windows, a broken refrigerator, numerous broken or damaged window screens, and what seems to be an AGA stove. The gas stove in question doesn’t have an apparatus to light the gas, but instead continually has a flame running under the cover of the stove; the flame can easily be released by the turn of a knob.

Taylor had issues with seeking help from maintenance in her apartment last year as well. After only the second day of having been moved in, she noticed boiling hot water pouring from the kitchen sink. She called maintenance as soon as the water refused to turn off and began to flood the kitchen.

“Everything started warping, like the undersides of the cabinets and everything because it was boiling,” Taylor said. “I immediately called facilities. I’m just like you got to get someone out here now. They came and asked if I used the garbage disposal then pulled out a rag covered in paint that someone shoved down there. He commented about it like ‘oh did you really think this was an emergency?’ But it’s boiling water coming out of the sink at 10 o’clock at night. If you had that happening at your house wouldn’t you wonder why and try to fix it?”

May Huff, a senior actuarial science major, is Taylor’s roommate. She’s had a slew of issues regarding the cleanliness of the apartment as well as issues with administration and maintenance. Huff was able to visit Taylor in the apartment several days before she was supposed to move in. She immediately noticed how dirty and stained the dark brown carpets looked.

“I bought a carpet shampoo vacuum cleaner and was repulsed with how filthy the water was,” Huff said. “This was only after [vacuuming and cleaning] half of the double room in the apartment. The carpet looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. The apartment also had yellow-stained blinds in the single room and the whole apartment had a hint of smoke.”

Upon seeing the filth that came from a small section of the apartment carpets, she emailed the housing director, Shannon Mulqueen. After several days of no response, she contacted the office administrator, Deb Barrick, who directed her to Mulqueen’s voicemail. Huff still has yet to get a response from Mulqueen. She then went to her Apartment Community Assistant (ACA), who told her, given the volume of maintenance requests at that time, it would be better to do it herself as it would be quicker.

After spending 15 hours and roughly $300 of her own money, not including labor, Huff had finally gotten the water sucked up from the carpets in the apartment from black to light grey. She could never get the water removed to be clear. Several times she had to stop working on the carpets because her hands and feet began to hurt and swell, but in the end, the damp and smoke smells were out of her apartment. Huff then met with the Dean of Students, Martha Dziwlik, to make her aware of the situation as well as to see if she could get reimbursed.

“I emailed the Dean of Students and a few days later she emailed me back,” Huff said. “We met and they weren’t very helpful. I was not able to get reimbursed, they said it wasn’t in their budget. It hurt because that was $300 dollars of my own money and the value of my time. They were very accusatory in that meeting, too. They were upset that my roommate let me in before I was supposed to move in. I looked it up and there weren’t any COVID safety issues with it.”

During the meeting with Dziwlik, Huff also discovered that Mulqueen had been emailing a variety of people attempting to get the situation solved; however, Huff was never cc’d in any of those emails. She stopped pursuing reimbursement as well as getting any problems resolved after the meeting with Dziwlik.

“I would have never done any of this or spent my money or time doing this,” Huff said. “I wanted to let it go [after that meeting] because I met with the highest person I could. I didn’t want to go to Frank Ross because I didn’t want to have any further repercussions. I was so scared I was going to get reprimanded if I went to Dr. Ross about this. So I just accepted it.”

Neither Taylor nor Huff have had any health issues to their knowledge from the mold or lack of cleanliness in their apartment. However, there have been students that have gotten grossly ill from BT.

Harlie Painter, junior dance performance major, lived in BT during the Fall 2021 semester, before having to move out due to the extensive mold issues. Growing up, Painter had experienced mold poisoning; when the symptoms began to set in, she knew immediately what the issue was. Painter and her roommates at first thought that the apartment was just musty from having been closed up all summer. Upon first inspection, they only found what looked to be a minor mold problem. So, she bought an air purifier and continued with the semester.

As the semester continued, however, Painter developed heart palpitations, extreme fatigue, swollen sinuses, and strep-like symptoms. After initially thinking she had COVID, Painter tested negative and began to look for mold in her apartment more thoroughly. Upon further inspection, she found mold behind the vents, under the floorboards, beneath the molding, within every window sill, and on the shelves under the kitchen sink; it seemed to cover the entire apartment.

Painter reported the issue to Butler University, who followed up by sending maintenance to clean and inspect the apartment. Maintenance then claimed that the majority of the dark spots were just dirt and left the majority of the mold behind after having finished cleaning. Maintenance did claim, however, that the building was so old that it should have just been torn down.

“Since my family has dealt with it a lot,” Painter said. “My mom still has extreme health issues from it. Mold isn't something that you can just easily get rid of. You can’t just spray bleach on it, that building needs to be torn down and rebuilt. It’s that bad.”

The issues continued to persist–and even worsen–reaching the point where Painter had to stay in a hotel to avoid health issues. To attempt to help remedy the situation, Butler agreed to help Painter and one of her roommates move into Apartment Village (AV), but gave them only one day to move and no assistance. The university then attempted to charge Painter and her roommate the full housing price of AV; only after negotiation with her parents, did Butler agree to keep the initial price Painter and her roommate were paying at BT.

Since moving to Apartment Village, Painter and her roommate have experienced no further health issues or difficulties with the university and are now working on healing their bodies to detox the previous effects of the mold.

Regarding Taylor’s earlier comment about her car’s catalytic converter being stolen, she was told by BUPD to fill out a complaint form about wanting cameras at BT. They also told her to encourage her friends to fill it out as well to further cement students’ want and need for security cameras. After a number of students filled out the form, Chief Conley emailed students residing in BT making them aware that they were taking steps to mitigate the issue. No immediate action has been taken as students were told the first step was to get stable Wi-Fi to BT so they can prototype a wireless camera system.

Taylor, like many BT students, was confused as to why BUPD would prototype a wireless camera system in a place that desperately needed cameras and had a terrible Wi-Fi connection, to begin with.

“My parents had to take a day off of work and lose a day of pay to drive down from Chicago to help me fix my catalytic converter the best we could without getting a new one or a new car,” Taylor said. “It’s a big investment that we have to think about now. There have been squad cars outside of BT during the day and while that’s a nice gesture, we need action. I looked at the crime log and my report wasn’t filed until two days after it had happened. They marked it closed without making me aware of it.”

Huff agrees. She talked to one of the BUPD officers about feeling unsafe without cameras at BT. The officer told her how BUPD has been attempting to get cameras at BT for years but were constantly shut down by Butler’s finance department due to a lack of funding or budgeting for them.

“It’s just funny how it’s apparently not in the budget,” Huff said. “Meanwhile there’s a whole email [that was sent to students] about all the different things being built or fixed on campus. I asked him if they were going to put a patrol car out there or something and he said that they rely on the ‘see something say something’ policy. I don’t feel safe and BUPD isn’t even willing to put up fake cameras. It’s really messed up. I’m left to wonder why one student’s concern about safety isn’t enough. Safety should not be budgeted.”

Both Taylor and Huff feel that the university needs to do better at not only the conditions at BT but also the communication between students and administrators. They both went through the proper channels and talked to the right people to no avail.

Taylor has been trying to be realistic with the potential timeline to fix many of the issues she’s noticed but is frustrated with having to advocate for herself. It’s gotten to the point where her parents are now having to get further involved.

“I hope all this will bring attention to these various issues,” Taylor said. “I doubt they’re going to be fixed immediately, so I expect them to be addressed during the summer. I hope there will be changes for future residents of BT because I am not coming back. I’m starting to look at other apartments nearby and that they actually have plans in place if these issues come up and will address them.”

Though Huff is graduating this semester, she still wants things to be improved for future BT residents. She doesn’t want anyone to have gone through what she dealt with this past year.

“I would love to be reimbursed, but the dean of students shut that down pretty quickly,” Huff said. “I just want cameras, they’re doing all these other construction projects and they tout their endowment and everything but they seem to neglect student housing. It’s not basic maintenance and it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned for years. [If that was the case,] the carpet should have been murky, not black. I just want better safety, at least make it look like you’re trying.”

Many students, like Huff, Taylor and Painter, are at their wit’s end with the numerous issues that have plagued BT this past year as well as, at least, the year before.

In the end, while there have been many construction projects recently announced and progressing on campus, both Taylor and Huff feel as though BT is left out, especially when it comes to the claims that security cameras cannot be purchased due to a lack of funds.

“Meanwhile you’re seeing in BT where you can’t even get a snow shovel, the Wi-Fi doesn’t work and you’re breathing in mold,” Taylor said. “It’s good in the sense that the university is continuously growing, however, I think the places where students live need to be addressed first. If you don’t have good living standards, how are you going to succeed academically? You can’t.”

Photos from Harlie Painter’s apartment at Butler Terrace, 2020-2021: