Repairs to elevators, card readers underway
After facing maintenance issues and minor problems last semester, residents of the recently renovated Patterson Hall are hoping for a smoother semester this spring.
Faulty laundry card readers and sometimes unreliable, if energy-efficient, elevators were among the myriad issues the women of Patterson reported in the fall.
"Some of the elevators have some issues like being stuck on one floor or going to the wrong floor," first-year elementary education student and Patterson resident Caroline Faucette said. "Recently, the main problem has been the card reader in the laundry room not working. A lot of girls don't keep quarters, so it's hard for them to do their laundry."
Although Colleen Mullis, the assistant director of marketing and communications for housing, said in an email that elevator and CarolinaCard reader problems in Patterson were not disproportionate to other residence halls on campus, she said housing is working to correct the issues.
The laundry card readers, handled by the CarolinaCard office, are in the process of being replaced.
"They have replaced the readers in the laundry room multiple times in the past month but had received a bad set with a faulty motherboard chipset on the unit," Mullis said. "They are working to rectify this issue."
The elevators, part of Patterson's recent environmentally friendly renovations, are assigned in call groups to reduce wasted time and energy instead of sending multiple elevators to answer the same call. These elevators, however, have resulted in long wait times for residents.
"Some of the elevators have some issues, like being stuck on one floor or going to the wrong floor," Faucette said.
First-year political science student Julia Sexton, also a Patterson resident, has had to work the elevator delays into her daily schedule.
"I usually put aside five to ten minutes to get an elevator. They always stop on the first and ninth floors, but don't stop in between nearly as often," she said. "There have been times when I've had to sprint to class or the elevator has started making alarm noises and not letting anyone do anything, almost as if it was stalling."
The holdups may have resulted from issues with keypads not accommodating lots of calls at the same time, Mullis said.
"There was a problem with elevator cab keypad push buttons, where if students touched three or more different floor requests at a time the elevator would not acknowledge their request," Mullis said. "The elevator keypads have been reprogrammed to accept multiple floor request demands by the students."
Though the completion of Patterson's renovations came down to the wire this past August, residents do not believe these maintenance issues are the result of rushed construction.
"None of this was a problem when we moved in, and I think anything will wear out with use. I don't think these things are because construction was rushed," Faucette said.
Despite the periodic problems with Patterson's recently updated technologies, residents are not particularly bothered by them.
"Every building has its quirks to work out, but I think we are truly blessed to be living here, and it's much better than what we could've gotten," first-year biology student Kelsey Williams said.