Freshman Citlalli Badillo, a seventh floor resident of Mehling Hall, does her laundry every Sunday night to optimize her time throughout the week.
But when both of Mehling’s elevators were out of service last month, Badillo found herself walking up and down multiple times a day.
“I have a lot of laundry and a lot of clothes and that bag was so heavy it took me twice as long to go up the steps and I was breathing really heavily,” Badillo said. “I remember just thinking the whole time, ‘I'm never gonna live in Mehling anymore because of this.’”
This incident is especially troubling for students who may have disabilities, and need access to the upper floors of the building.
David Hobbs, Associate Vice President for Facilities and Construction, said that UP — in their process of modernizing many of the elevators throughout campus — planned to upgrade both Mehling elevators last summer but ran into supply chain issues, forcing them to push it back to this summer.
“Both elevators are getting upgraded this summer as a part of a planned project that we had,” Hobbs said. “There are really long lead times on the elevator cabs and that's what we ran into. So we're continuing to try and keep the one functional, but it's had a few different problems with its motor.”
“Unfortunately, one elevator failed in the midst of the fall,” Hobbs continued. “And we had this planned project going by the time we talked to them they said ‘you're not going to get your car before the summer comes along.’”
William Seekamp is the News and Managing Editor of The Beacon. He can be reached at Seekamp22@up.edu.
Tiffany Marquez Escobar is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at marqueze25@up.edu.
