Students Feel the Heat Waiting on Maintenance

It is not unusual for a Southwestern College maintenance request to sit for a few weeks or a month. An air conditioning issue in room 429, however, went for more than five years without resolution, causing faculty and students to get overheated.

Room 429, a reading classroom located in the Academic Success Center, has some folks hot under the collar.

John Brown, SWC’s facilities director, insists everything is taken care of. Faculty who use the sweltering room have taken a wait-and-see attitude.

“It appears there have been multiple and varied problems over the years with HVAC [Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning] in building 420, impacting room 429,” he said. “It appears maintenance had addressed those as they have come up, which is not unusual, and Dr. Levine is now personally satisfied with the current conditions.”

Dr. Joel Levine, dean of the School and Language and Literature, said he was not personally satisfied.

“I saw Gus [Frederick “Gus” Latham, maintenance supervisor] this morning and he’s not 100 percent satisfied,” Levine said. “He felt pretty good about it and thought they had taken care of it. But the test remains to see what it’s like after a lot of students had been in there for a while on a reasonably warm day.”
Levin, Latham and many others insist there is reason to be cynical after five-plus years of room 429 as a hot topic.