Instead of waking to their alarm clocks and a day off from classes, members of the Alpha Phi sorority woke to a flooded house on Saturday morning, Feb. 10.
Due to old plumbing in the house, it was no surprise to any of the sisters when they found the cause of the flood to be a toilet that had overflowed upstairs.
“Our plumbing in the Alpha Phi house is very old. I believe every toilet in the house has at some point flooded,” Christie Hare, Alpha Phi president said.
Although this has been one of the most severe floods for Alpha Phi, it has not been the first. Over winter break, the house encountered the same problem with a plumber deeming the toilet unusable. According to Hare, no further action was taken in order to prevent flooding, which ultimately ended in this past week’s hardships.
In between, there have been several other floods, but all were found almost immediately after they started and therefore caused no damage to the house.
“We pay all of this money to housing and expect things to be taken care of and to live in a safe environment,” Hare said. “I can not fill my house as needed when it is moldy and floods every 30 days because housing will not take care of the problem.”
Since the flooding did not start until later at night when all of the sisters were sleeping, it was too late to keep some possessions from being ruined.
“Many things were damaged,” Katie Monus, junior Alpha Phi member said. “We lost clothing, shoes, rugs, textbooks, and one girl’s computer was on the floor. Downstairs, our wood floor is popping up at the seams and we will have to pay for it to be replaced.”
Pushed to bring more women into house or lose it altogether, the flooding has turned off potential recruits and put a sour taste in new sister’s mouths.
“We just finished our recruitment parties for the spring and three new girls had moved in and one of their rooms was the worst hit,” Monus said. “It is hard to recruit girls to live in the house when it repeatedly floods and their things are ruined.”
No follow-ups have been made since the latest flood to the house and some Alphi Phi members are worried about the types of molds that could be growing within the walls.
“It is unsafe to live in a house that could have mold in it,” Alyssa McWilliams, junior Alpha Phi member said. “[The university is] spending all this money on this new student center which is awesome, but maybe they should focus on the little things first.”