Campus adapts to summer housing needs

Flood recovery workers clean flood-damaged areas of Mayflower Hall on Wednesday, July 9. The University of Iowa residence hall normally hosts adult conference attendees and students in programs such as the Iowa Biosciences Advantage program. Photo by Tim Schoon.

Mother Nature threw a wrench into the University’s residence hall schedules in the form of a 500-year flood, but summer program participants, whether junior high or college students, adapted to spur-of-the-moment changes, as did those working behind the scenes.

Steve Fausch, University Housing’s maintenance operations manager, says his crew had been getting ready for the flood since December, long before the Iowa River crested June 15.

“The University’s upper administration was sensitive to the fact that we potentially could have a flood,” he says. “We were quite prepared within my department.”

Fausch followed the University’s Flood Emergency Response Plan, which an engineering consultant had developed several years ago based on data from the flood of 1993. Sandbagging had begun even before students checked in to the Iowa Summer Music Camps or the Iowa Biosciences Advantage (IBA) program.

IBA, a UI program preparing minority students for doctoral studies, had given students the option of going home the week of June 16, when most of the University shut down due to rising waters. UI first-year student Ernesto Henderson, a psychology major in the IBA program from Fort Washington, Md., decided to stay in Iowa City.

Henderson thought he would be spending his summer in Mayflower. When Mayflower became off-limits, he had to move to Burge Hall and an Iowa City motel before winding up at Stanley Hall where he finally could unpack for the summer.

“Have you ever watched one of those zombie movies, where you run and keep on running? That’s what it was like,” Henderson says.

Since it was business as usual for the health sciences campus that week, Henderson hopped on his bike at his motel on Highway 1 and pedaled to his job—counting chicken pox particles at the University’s Medical Labs.

As college students were moving out of Mayflower, Kevin Kastens, associate professor of music and director of Iowa Music Camps, was formulating a contingency plan for the three one-week camps that would have been attended by almost 300 junior and high school students from near and far. Fortunately, the resident campers had been assigned to live in Currier Hall, which was above the flood plain, but workshops and concerts would have to be relocated, as there was a threat that Voxman Music Building could be flooded.

The school moved percussion instruments, electric pianos, and drum sets, among other things, from Voxman into Iowa City West High School, the camp’s contingency location.

Kastens says the 150 band and orchestra campers were completely compliant. He added that that might have had something to do with them seeing dozens of the 400 National Guard personnel sleeping in West High’s hallways.

“The students realized the seriousness of the situation,” he says. “They cooperated fully and were great to work with.”

The campers got through the week’s rehearsals and clinics but because the final concert was canceled due to the crisis on campus, they couldn’t show off their newfound skills to an audience. The two subsequent camps—piano and percussion, and jazz—were called off, in what was the music school’s 57th year of music camps.

Cambus ferried the budding musicians to and from the high school, Currier, and Burge, where they chowed down their meals. The last day of that camp, however, Burge lost power, and only regained some of it a week later.

Burge Market Place was serving food by June 23, but students were eating off of paper plates, not china.

“There was no steam to wash the dishes,” says Anne Harkins, Burge Market Place’s manager.

The flood set back scheduled maintenance and construction at Burge, although work has resumed. Mayflower, which was scheduled to have half its furniture replaced, now also needs to recover its mechanical, electrical, and plumbing capabilities. Not everything will be ready for students when they collect their room keys this fall, but basic services will be available, Fausch says.

Already tight deadlines, which construction and maintenance crews adhere to so the entire operation can stay on schedule, have been further compressed due to delays caused by the flood. The University, however, is now allowing work in the residence halls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Greg Dirks, University Housing’s custodial services manager, and Fausch are doing what they can to get the residence halls ship-shape soon.

“We’re orchestrating everything, hopefully, with not too many curveballs thrown our way,” Dirks says.

Summer is already a busy time for the Contracts and Assignment unit in University Housing—staff members are busy making housing assignments and answering inquiries from students and parents. Dicta Schoenfelder, manager of contracts and assignments, says that the goal this year is the same as other years: to assign all first-year students who apply for on-campus housing by the end of July.

Even then, the work is not done. Schoenfelder says that as students cancel their housing applications, her unit reassigns the space—an effort that will continue until early August.

"We begin making assignments for new students in April, and continue throughout the summer," Schoenfelder says. "We stopped assigning for about three weeks to concentrate on flood issues, but we are back on schedule."

by Po Li Loo