The recent rainfall has caused leaking in several of the buildings on campus, rousing questions of student and equipment safety.
The Art Building, Journalism Building and Performing Arts Center are three of the structures that are suffering from water damage. The P.A.C. is one of the buildings seeing formidable leaking.
“It has been leaking since it first opened in 1970,” Mass Media Communication & Theatre professor, Jim Anderson said.
The stage is one of the most dangerous areas in the P.A.C. according to Anderson.
“When we are performing while it’s raining, we have to dodge puddles of water,” he said.
In addition to the stage, Anderson said he cannot put his computer on the floor due to the leaking. In a separate issue, water leaks onto equipment in the property room of the TV studio. A building problem Anderson knows of may cause this issue.
Anderson said the drainage system for the P.A.C is in the walls, making it difficult to tell where the leaks initially start.
Head of the art department Joseph Daun said the leaks are nothing new for the Art Building.
“This building has been leaking since I got here last year,” he said.
Daun said he was promised the roof would be fixed a month into the school year, but he was then told money initially allocated for the roof was used elsewhere.
Facilities project manager Jim Patton said right now fixing the roofs is primarily an issue of funding. He said facilities are currently prioritizing projects and as soon as money becomes available for fixing the roofs, it will be placed on the list.
As far as the money initially set aside for the roof, Patton said he did not know where that money went.
“I couldn’t tell you specifics, (about what the money was used for) things came up,” Patton said. “I have no way of knowing how the money gets shuffled around.”
Although these issues raise a question of safety, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has no jurisdiction over public universities according to safety and occupational manager for the Dallas branch of OSHA, Howard Cole.
“OSHA applies to workers; students or student workers would not be covered,” he said. “It is only for federal government employees and private employees for a business not under government money.”
There is security protocol in place for the university.
Environmental manager for the Texas A&M University system Gordon Evans said the A&M system develops safety policies and guidelines that are sent down to each school.
“They are broad policies,” he said.
Each university is then expected to make specifications of their own in order to deal with student and facility safety. Once these specific plans are made, they are handled and carried out by each schools respective safety department.
Texas A&M University-Commerce has the office of risk management. Safety manager Derek Preas said the campus creates its safety guidelines based on federal regulations and the policies handed down by the system. He said from a safety development issue his job is to present issues of safety to the facilities department, so they may be fixed.
Preas said the leaking is an issue, which needs to be fixed, and he is confident the problem will soon be remedied.
“Things are out there to fix them,” Preas said.
Finding funding to fix this issue can be a problem according to Evans.
He said the system and its campuses rely on state funding for higher education and asking for money to complete maintenance projects is difficult.
“We are trying to keep tuition down,” Evans said. “Sometimes it is easier to get money to build new buildings than justify fixing an old one.”