GW began renovating Bell Hall last month to upgrade the building after years of community complaints over facilities problems, University officials confirmed.
Division of Safety & Operations Customer Engagement and Service Enhancement Specialist John Ralls said officials began various upgrades to Bell Hall on May 19 with the goal of supporting the University’s academic mission. He said the renovations include heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades on the third and fourth floors, window replacements to the whole building, new flooring and refinished walls, painted hallways and new finishes, furniture and technology upgrades in four academic classrooms.
Ralls said the upgrades are part of a review process of the budget and priorities, and the decision was part of the annual capital budget process made by DSO officials, individual departmental leadership and senior leaders.
“As with other renovations and new construction, the Division of Safety and Operations works closely with building stakeholders to ensure coordination before, during and after the project including any needed relocations,” Ralls said.
Ralls declined to comment on the specific issues in Bell Hall the renovations will address and said the University does not disclose the costs of its renovation projects.
Gustavo Hormiga, a biology professor who has been at the University since 1996, said officials are upgrading Bell Hall after “decades” of complaints and injuries that stemmed from the inability to control the temperature in rooms.
“This is a great improvement, considering where we’re coming from, but the bar was really low,” Hormiga said.
Hormiga said officials have not communicated with faculty and staff about why they decided to begin the renovation process last month to replace all windows in Bell Hall due to some not being able to stay open and ensure lab and offices on the third and fourth floors of the building have HVAC units.
Hormiga said the inability to control the temperature was one of the “offending chronic problems” in Bell Hall because it would hinder the functioning of labs, where shelf-stable chemicals would be unusable at high temperatures and parts of instruments, like scanning electron microscopes, would fry. He said it was “challenging” to get work done in Bell Hall because he would “constantly” submit Fix-It requests to fix the temperature in rooms.
Hormiga said he does not know what prompted officials to renovate what he calls “Bell Hell” this summer, but he thinks the several injuries in recent years caused by broken windows led officials to address its issues. He said students, faculty and staff would open windows in Bell Hall to help cool room temperatures during hot summer days, but several window springs were broken, which caused many windows to not be able to stay open.
More than a dozen graduate biology students penned a letter to Columbian College of Arts & Sciences deans in December 2023 expressing their years of frustration with fluctuating temperatures, black mold, asbestos, ceiling leaks, vermin and malfunctioning windows in the building. The letter called on the University and CCAS to take “safety seriously” and to arrange a meeting with CCAS leadership.
“These conditions would be unacceptable anywhere but are particularly egregious at GWU, a prestigious institution that claims to have ‘state-of-the-art research facilities,'” the letter reads.
Hormiga said one of his doctoral students a couple of years ago used a piece of wood to keep a broken lab window open on a hot day, and when the student tried to shut the window, it fell on her hand. He said the student was brought to the emergency room and needed physical therapy for “quite a while.”
Weeks after the accident with his graduate student, Hormiga said a cleaning staff member was cleaning the men’s bathroom when the same accident occurred, only this time there was blood “all over the place.”
Other issues have occurred in Bell Hall, including the presence of “black specks of something” in lab vents, Hormiga said. He said contractors he asked about the “black specks” over his time at GW told him they are degrading insulation usually made from fiberglass, which is a carcinogen.
Officials took samples to test what the specks are, sent them to a lab and a GW employee in charge of coordinating the testing received the results, but that employee left the University before delivering the results, Hormiga said. He said he has “been insisting” officials tell faculty what they are breathing in, but it remains unknown.
“I want to know the chemical composition of anything I’m breathing other than nitrogen, oxygen and so on which is the normal stuff,” Hormiga said.
Catherine Forster, the director of the Geological Sciences Program housed in Bell Hall, told The Hatchet in 2023 she has had mold in her lab three times, with the most recent outbreak four or five years prior. She said she placed a dehumidifier in her lab to prevent future mold outbreaks.
