March 10, 2022
Campus News
PAGE 4
Flooded
After being told to evacuate the building due to a water pipe burst late at night, Alumni Hall residents were forced to find a different place to stay. ___ By Irene Rotondo___ @irenerrotondo
“Everybody’s gotta get out of the building! Get out, get out!!” With a toothbrush in hand, pajama-clad junior Chase Parrott was almost ready for bed when he heard shouts and thuds in the hallway on the fourth floor of Alumni Hall around 11:30 p.m. on Sunday night. His RA was going door to door, waking students and ordering them to leave immediately. The RA was urgent, but Parrott didn’t know why they had to leave until he got a text from a friend. “There was a pipe leak,” the text read, “you have to get out of the building.” Alumni Hall residents received an email from Graduate Community Director Laurel Mahler at 11:16 p.m. stating that, “...due to flooding in the basement, all residents need to evacuate the building immediately.” Interim Chief of Police Joseph Tiraboschi and Facilities Director
Kevin Roy communicated at 12:15 a.m. Monday morning by email to the campus community that Public Safety had been notified of a “water main break at Alumni Hall” at approximately 10:30 p.m. Public Safety immediately contacted Facilities, and the departments had been working together to “isolate the water to the exterior of the building.” They also stated Residence Life was working to relocate students, and all community members should avoid the “main campus road” and Alumni Hall until further notice. “I walked out of the building and there was a whole group outside, a lot of the kids that lived in Alumni,” said Parrott. “The police officer was like, ‘I know we just told you guys to get out, but we really don’t know how long this is going to take, so we advise you grab your stuff for the night,’ and nobody really knew what that meant, because
we didn’t know if that meant we were coming back in two hours or if we weren’t going to sleep there tonight.” The students were then allowed back in the dorm for a quick collection of their possessions. Parrott grabbed the items he needed for school the next day and headed out -- luckily, he had a friend in the Living Center who was still awake, and they opened their suite to Parrott. Not all students were as lucky, though -- or at least, not at first. Sophomore Alumni Hall roommates Celia Fogarty and Jenna Lagana weren’t in their room when they got texts from their RA around 11:00 p.m. telling them to evacuate. Fogarty was heading back to campus from work and frantically began calling friends for a place to stay, while Lagana watched the news unfold with her boyfriend and his friends in Abbey-Appleton Hall. When she got back
A flooded basement in Alumni Hall (Photo Courtesy of Brenna Lachapelle)
to campus, Fogarty had arranged to stay with a friend -- except all she had were her work clothes on her back and wallet in hand. Fogarty headed back to Alumni, where she discovered her key card access had been shut off. “Fortunately, one of the guys working on the pipes let me in, so I could grab some of my stuff for classes, but if I wasn’t able to do that, all I had were my work clothes, and nothing
else,” Fogarty recalled. “I got the text from my RA and I was just confused,” said Lagana. “I ended up DMing her separately and just being like, ‘What’s going on, can I come back to Alumni?’ and basically she said, ‘No,’ but didn’t tell me where I could go. “I was already at Abbey, but if I didn’t have somewhere to go, See Alumni continued on Page 8
