Josh Imhof & Liz Mantush & Kaitlyn Hughes | features editor & staff writer
& news editor

As Halloween night turned to the first morning of November, Tessa Haffey was fast asleep on the eighth floor of McGinley Hall. The senior forensics major lay in her bed when suddenly, her roommate came in to wake her up.

The apartment was flooding.

Haffey jumped out of bed and stepped into her living room where she found the emergency sprinklers leaking on the floor. She also noticed liquid coming from underneath her front door. When she opened it, she was met with the sound of rushing water.

“Two ceiling tiles right outside of our door fell out of the ceiling because of how wet they were, and water just started pouring in the bottom of our door,” Haffey said.

Water also leaked down the walls of the hallway, causing damage to the paint and drywall.

“I honestly wasn’t too surprised,” she said.

In recent weeks, students have come forward to express their frustrations with McGinley Hall, St. Martin Hall and Brottier Hall, all of which are managed by Lumina Properties.

The Duke spoke with more than 15 of these students to learn about their experiences living in these buildings.

‘A slap in the face’

Anton Morrison Sanchez, junior cybersecurity student, initially thought his roommates were to blame for the frigid temperature of his McGinley apartment.

“We were arguing with each other ‘Who keeps turning this down?’” Morrison Sanchez said.

One night, late in the fall semester, when they would check the thermostat, temperatures would often read below 50 degrees. They eventually realized the heating system would never kick on in the first place.

During this time, they did whatever they could to stay warm, whether it was wearing layers, staying under blankets or resorting to “DIY” methods.

“I was walking around with a garbage bag on because I’m like, ‘I need to keep myself insulated,’” Morrison Sanchez said.

The cybersecurity major reported the issue to maintenance, who then gave them space heaters while they worked to fix the issue. Soon after, Morrison Sanchez left for winter break.

When he returned, the heating was fixed, but his frustration lingered.

“When you’re in school and you’re trying to study, you’re trying to do exams … I don’t feel like you should be worrying about [the dorms],” Morrison Sanchez said. “I’m not saying everything’s perfect or should be perfect, but people shouldn’t be too cold to even be in their rooms.”

Other students, like Allison Simonetta, have also faced problems with heating.

In December, she submitted a maintenance request because of a lack of heat in her apartment. She said that the temperatures in the apartment got down to 59 degrees.

She said that maintenance workers told her the HVAC unit put into her apartment was too small for the space.

“They came out with a heat gun to thaw out the ice on our unit,” she said.

As a senior, Simonetta will be moving out for good in May. However, she wants the issue to be fixed not just for herself but for future residents.

“I want the issue to be fixed because I know that they’re just going to put more kids into the same unit,” she said.

Simonetta has since been moved from her original unit into a single, and she said Lumina has offered 25% off of her rent for December and the spring semester.

Previously, she has been offered a single on a different floor of the building and $50 in flex as compensation. Last semester, she was given $332 toward fall semester rent and a small discount off of spring.

Student Government Association President Nick Miller said students have told him that when problems come up, they have given up on reaching out, because they don’t think they will get a response.

He reached out to Simonetta to offer sympathy for her situation, and she told him that he was one of the first people to contact her personally and offer to help.

Gabrielle Welsch, vice president of marketing and communications at Duquesne, told The Duke in an email that the university has worked with Lumina to resolve heating challenges in a few apartments in McGinley.

“Two of the affected students have moved to new residences after Lumina’s efforts to fix the heating system have not been fully effective to their satisfaction,” he said.

Welsch said that upon visiting apartments, Student Life leaders found that one unit’s heating system appeared able to get temperatures into the lower 60s, though its performance was irregular and it could not go consistently higher.

“The university has repeatedly pressed its third-party partner Lumina to fix the problem,” he said. “Despite the efforts of Lumina’s maintenance professionals and engineers facilitating several tactics to address it, and their assurances that the matter was under control, problems continued to persist.”

Welsch said that Lumina initially offered the students a relocation option in another McGinley unit as they tried to fix the problem, but the students declined the option in the hope that the heat would return to being fully operational. As the issue continued, students were offered other options, including a unit in Brottier Hall, the university’s own suite at the top of Assumption Hall and another McGinley unit where they ultimately decided to relocate.

After repeated interventions by the university, Lumina could not guarantee that the units in McGinley Hall would be fully repaired in the immediate future, Welsch said. Senior Vice President for Student Life Leanna Fenneberg and her team met again with the students, and the students accepted a relocation to other units in McGinley Hall.

“Both Lumina and the university have agreed to compensate the students for the extreme disruption that this and similar issues caused for two consecutive winters in the same unit,” Welsch said. “The university will continue to press Lumina to repair the heating system as well as to clarify expectations that their management will address problems in the future with the same sense of urgency as Duquesne.”

Gray Bekurs, executive vice president of marketing at Capstone On-Campus Management which is Lumina’s parent company, said in a statement to The Duke that two units within McGinley had systems that were not able to properly heat the room because of less insulation and higher ceilings.

“Measures have been taken to improve insulation and now we are able to maintain temperatures of over 75 degrees in those units. A permanent fix is being developed for these,” he said.

Jocelyn Babirad, sophomore chemistry major and St. Martin’s resident, said she had the opposite problem with her HVAC system.

“My first week that I moved into St. Martins, my AC wasn’t working. My room was 80 degrees,” she said.

Babirad put in a maintenance request when she moved in the first week of August, and maintenance staff told her over the phone that the issue happened building wide and that they had to wait for a part to come in.

Lumina staff reached out to her on Oct. 20 saying they determined the issue with the AC had to do with piping, and told her the issues will be addressed over winter break, according to emails obtained by The Duke. Babirad received a $50 Amazon gift card as compensation.

Lumina staff said in the email that they would send communication before the end of November with a schedule for the work and what she and her roommate would need to do to prepare.

Babirad did not receive another email until Nov. 20 which notified her that a filter change in the apartment was scheduled for Nov. 24-26. She said maintenance came and fixed the AC during that time.

“It was kind of a slap in the face,” she said.

Babirad said she pays about $12,ooo per year for her room.

Bekurs said it is “not unusual for equipment to fail, even in a new or newly renovated facility.”

“Our standard of care is to complete a repair within 24 hours. Warranty items where we are required to contact the original construction company or an outside vendor and repairs that require us to order parts can take longer,” he said.

‘The message is not getting across’

Kate Williams, junior multiplatform journalism major, works at Pins Mechanical Co. in South Side and returns home as late as 3:30 a.m. on weekends. When she gets back to McGinley, she said there are times she has to ring the doorbell to have a desk aid let her in because the card reader at the front door doesn’t work.

“That’s always really annoying, especially when I come back late from work, and I’m exhausted,” Williams said. “I know I’m capable of protecting myself, but I’d love to not just be standing outside waiting for [people] to come up behind me.”

Williams said she has told the desk aids about this, but it has not been resolved yet.

Seniors Adrienne Barowski and Felicity Agostino also said they have encountered malfunctioning card readers.

In one instance, Agostino said the interior door system also broke.

“We had a police officer stationed in his car in front of our building and then someone sitting in a desk chair in between the two outside doors that would open the doors for everyone,” she said.

These obstacles, combined with the cost of living at McGinley Hall, have frustrated Williams.

A studio single in McGinley costs $21,988 per year, a two-bedroom costs $18,606 per year, a four-bedroom costs $14,616 per year and a four-bedroom deluxe costs $14,876 per year, according to Duquesne’s website.

“We’re paying a lot of money to live in this building. So I think they should address the issues at hand, and not slap a sign on it that says it’s broken or bad,” Williams said. “Clearly the message is not getting across, or if it is, they’re just ignoring it or taking their sweet time.”

Throughout this academic year, signs have hung on two of McGinley’s three elevators stating that they are out of order, something junior Alex Jackovich has become familiar with after getting stuck in one on Jan. 22. Currently, only one elevator in McGinley is out of service.

“That’s one of my bigger fears,” he said. “When that happened, I was happy that it just stopped and it didn’t just fall.”

The elevator stopped between the fourth and fifth floors, trapping Jackovich and another student in it for more than an hour.

The two pressed the emergency call button and contacted the front desk, who then contacted someone to fix the elevator. Jackovich said that he was uncertain of what was happening while he waited.

“My problem was that they didn’t really communicate anything with us, and I’m in there worried about how long I am going to be in here. I thought we were close to getting out,” he said.

Eventually, maintenance freed the pair from the elevator. However, the situation temporarily knocked it out of service.

This led to long lines forming in the elevator lobbies as students came and went from classes.

“I once had to wait 15 minutes for the elevator to come. That should never happen in a building with three elevators,” said junior international relations major Gabriella Rios.

Lumina’s website advertises ‘In Building Mail and Package Delivery,’ but Rios and other residents have said their mail has been lost.

On one occasion, Rios ordered an item off the fashion site Depop and had it shipped to McGinley, but staff claimed to not have the package. McGinley residents have access to two mailrooms, one with Amazon lockers that require a code to open and one with mail slots that require a key.

Rios said she never received a code for her Depop package or found it in her mail slot. Instead, she found out the package had been delivered to the Des Places mailroom, where employees told her that her situation was not uncommon.

“The Des Places mail worker was telling me there’s been a lot of problems,” Rios said. “The UPS drivers don’t know where [McGinley] is, and they don’t know where to put it. There’s no outside mail thing. There’s no known mail room.”

Rios had complained to Resident Directors and Duquesne Housing, and she received the same response from both.

“You tell Duquesne, they say, ‘that’s a Lumina problem.’ You try to reach out to Lumina, and it’s just radio silence,” she said.

Bekurs said that deliveries are often dropped off in large quantities of packages to the mailroom, which can take time to sort into students’ individual lockers. He stated that delivery carriers can mark a package as delivered, but it can take time to get the package to its final destination.

“Many times, packages are delivered to the incorrect residence hall by the carriers, resulting in additional delays,” Bekurs said.

Juniors Maddie Sweeney and Olivia Samaniego said they started seeing rodents in August when they first moved in and have been living with them ever since.

“It was running in and out under the couch where I was sitting, in and out of my kitchen into our room, going over our stuff,” Samaniego said. “I’m afraid they’re gonna get into our pantry and get into our food.”

The roommates put in a worker order on Sept. 4 that led to traps being installed, but they did not take care of the rodent problem. Despite mice still living in the apartment, Sweeney and Samaniego said they are hesitant to reach out again because they feel it won’t help.

“I think we figured if we reached out like it wouldn’t really accomplish anything,” Sweeney said.

Bekurs said that to Capstone’s knowledge all other issues have been addressed.

“If this is not the case, or if residents have new concerns, we encourage them to stop by the front desk of their residence hall and we will work with them to find a solution. We have professional staff members in each building whose primary roles are to work with students and help make sure these types of issues don’t occur again,” he said.

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu

Liz Mantush can be reached at mantushe@duq.edu

Kaitlyn Hughes can be reached at hughesk10@duq.edu