After returning from winter break, my roommate and I, who live on the eighth floor of Boulevard Apartments in Tower B, were shocked to find small white specks throughout our carpet. We looked around the room to see where it would be coming from, then finally looked up. There was a huge crack in our ceiling, looking like the opening to the Upside Down in Stranger Things. 

We continue to investigate our room and find more white specks of the ceiling in our bathroom and what appears to be paint splattered across our sink cabinets. We immediately put in a work order. 

No one shows up for three days.

We cleaned up the bathroom and vacuumed our carpet as our fear of what could come through the crack got bigger. It is winter in fact.

When maintenance shows up, the man simply looks up at the crack and says, “Do you want us to wait until summer to cover it up?”

I stare at the man blankly for a few seconds, then say “Of course we want it fixed. We don’t want snow or rain to drip on us as we sleep. We don’t want it to get worse.” 

The man nods and says, “We’ll have to reach out to some plaster guys; we [Point Park maintenance] can’t fix that.”

Time passes; thankfully nothing comes through the ceiling until this past Thursday. 

My roommate is sitting on her bed and feels water hit her head, then finds the corner of her bed to be soaked. We scramble to get the mop bucket and some trash cans to catch the now steady water coming through the Upside Down crack. 

We immediately call Physical Plant. They say they’ll reach out to the crew to look at it. A half hour passes. We call again and get voicemail. Another half hour passes, so we call Public Safety. It takes another half hour for someone to show up.

The man walks in, looks at the crack, then says he’s going to the roof. My roommate and I try to explain the situation and that we tried to get this fixed before, but he is not having any of it.

Twenty minutes later, he comes back and says he “squeegeed” some of the water but will reach out to his supervisor to see if a roofer can come in, because he “doesn’t do roofs.”

Needless to say, as someone who pays almost $5,000 a semester and who put in work orders that were dismissed, I was very angry.  

Thankfully, the dripping stops after a few hours, but all of this could have been prevented if our work order had been taken seriously in the first place. We pay for these services, but why are we not being given them? Why are we not being taken seriously? I should not be stressing out if my ceiling is going to collapse. I should not be stressing out if I need to find and pay for an expert myself. I should not feel like I am asking for the world anytime I put in a work order. I put in a work order, because something is seriously wrong and should not be dismissed or treated like I do not know anything. 

Maintenance simply needs to do better.