Olivia Brown, Campus Carrier Features Editor
It all started on the first Wednesday of classes. I walked into my room and immediately I could tell something was not right. Usually, when I took a step into my room, I dove for the covers or any blanket I could get my hands on; my room was an icebox, but I like it that way. However, Wednesday afternoon, instead of walking into the inviting cool blast of air from my room, I walked right into stagnant, uncomfortable heat.
I tried turning on the air conditioning unit for 20 minutes, to no avail. Mentally, I was imagining my roommate and myself three months down the road still without a functioning air conditioning unit, under the covers for an entirely different reason than we had been the day before.
I didn’t know whether I should start crying or if I should begin to scream about everything that has gone wrong with my room(s) in Friendship. (Friendship is one of the only dorms that have not been renovated in a couple of decades… or so I’ve been told).
Instead of doing either of the above, I did what I have been told to do for the past three years; I went to my RA.
As usual, my RA was as calm as could be. She carefully listened to my crazed rant, and after I had finished “talking” about how everything that could go wrong went wrong in Friendship, she told me that the unit would be fixed, but unfortunately not that day. It was already after 5 p.m. by the time I discovered the broken unit so we would not be able to get a hold of anyone from the physical plant. However, she promised that she would call first thing in the morning.
Despite her call to the physical plant, our unit still was not fixed the following day. That afternoon I tried calling as well to see if I could get an answer as to when our unit would be fixed. No luck.
When my roommate found out about the unfortunate news, even she called. Some how or another she was able to get an answer.
The news was bad: the main component of our unit was broken.
Apparently there were two options. Either physical plant would have to find a replacement part or they would be putting in a brand new unit.
It was a nightmare all over again. Instead of being a one-day fix, the number of days it would take to get a replacement part, much less an entire unit, was unforeseeable.
My roommate and I went to sleep frustrated and hot, all with the buzz of a box fan in the background.
I woke up, went to class, did all the normal stuff during my day and tried not to think about the air conditioning situation.
My roommate was in the room when I got back the following day. Though our unit had not been fixed, it had obviously been tampered with, as the cover to the unit was lying on the floor.
About 10 minutes later, two staff members from the physical plant arrived with, lo and behold, a replacement part.
My roommate and I would have immediately started dancing out of pure joy had we not been in the company of two men we didn’t know.
The men explained that it had taken so long for us to get an answer back because they weren’t able to determine the cause of the problem until the afternoon of the day before.
Once the men had replaced the malfunctioning part and turned the power on, cool air filled our room once again.
To be honest, those three days when our air conditioning unit was broken, I complained a lot. I was mad that yet another thing had gone wrong in the dorm I was living in. My automatic response, as is for most students, was to blame Berry. After this experience, I have come to realize how wrong I am in doing that. What I, and Berry students in general, don’t realize is that, however mad we are at the institution for something that has gone wrong (whether it be a broken air conditioning unit, faulty furniture or even problems with our schedules), there are actual people trying to remedy those mistakes. Instead of blowing a fuse the moment something goes wrong and being short with the staff trying to fix that problem, we should give them a chance to remedy the situation. The two men who came and fixed my air conditioning unit were as nice as could be. I felt bad for complaining about the situation and the physical plant as a whole.
Before going on our next rant about another issue at Berry, we should consider the individuals whose jobs are to fix those issues. They are not evil; they are not trying to delay a fix on purpose. They are people who deserve to be treated with respect.