Last week, exactly one month after Amsterdam Hall flooded, disaster and ensuing miscommunication from officials struck the residence hall a second time. The first time the building flooded, GW issued an all-clear a half hour before officials let students back into the building, and prior updates never revealed which floors were even affected. This event revealed key communication issues officials needed to remedy. But when the sprinkler went off again last week, we were kept out of the building until a little past 3 a.m. on a weeknight with insufficient communication once again. Campus Living and Residential Education’s failure to sufficiently communicate with residents throughout the incident forced us to seek updates from alternative sources, like Fizz, a GW-specific social media app. CLRE needs to take accountability and improve its communication strategies in emergency situations, providing alternative spaces staffed with GW officials for impacted students to go and offering frequent updates and estimates for reentry.
When the fire alarm went off last Thursday, I was hopeful CLRE had learned how to make the process more efficient after the last flooding incident. I knew people whose personal items had been soaked the night of Sept. 23, and I didn’t even want to imagine the consequences if the same thing were to happen again. During last month’s incident, my dorm had suffered water damage, and it was left to my roommate and I to submit a FixIt ourselves to rectify the situation. Frankly, it should be the University’s job to communicate to facilities when what happened is out of the student’s control. This illustrates how the lack of communication has been consistent during emergencies in this residence hall.
Residents of Amsterdam Hall received a GW Alert at 11:56 p.m. and 25 minutes later, the Community Coordinator of Fulbright and Strong Hall, Johanna Burgos, sent an email to everyone instructing us to move to the University Student Center, where according to the email, there were staff and emergency responders waiting. But when my roommate and I reached the USC, the only people there were a group of girls waiting in line for chicken tenders at Absurd Bird. There were no staff in sight, at least to my knowledge. I’m not even sure if they ever showed up — if they did, they definitely didn’t properly identify themselves or broadcast that they were there to help. The absence of staff put a damper on our already decreasing hope that we would be let back into Amsterdam Hall at a reasonable time.
At 1:02 a.m., the community coordinator — who I hadn’t seen in the USC — sent a follow-up email that specified that the sprinklers had been activated. They didn’t specify how, why or which floors were affected and gave no indication of when officials would let us back inside, which just intensified anxieties. By this point, I was in full panic mode. It wasn’t just the fact that I had nowhere to sleep but also the overwhelming worry that my things back at the dorm would be soaked. And since officials weren’t giving adequate updates, worrying was the only thing we could do.
CLRE needs to provide clear instructions for students who find themselves in situations like these. The existing evacuation “outline” doesn’t cut it. Since the current one-page document instructs students to leave all belongings behind, GW should be able to provide basic necessities to evacuated students, along with substantial amounts of personnel to meet the needs of students. CLRE’s mission, as listed on their website, is to create safe communities “where all residents can feel at home.” I certainly didn’t feel at home while wandering around Foggy Bottom without any updates on the state of my dorm.
The lack of appropriate communication is simply unacceptable. All residents of Amsterdam Hall should receive constant updates about next steps throughout the entire night, as well as information about what will happen to students whose rooms have been soaked. My parents told me the next morning they had received an email around 5 a.m. stating that “the alarm was triggered by sprinkler interference.” But I never got this communication from Burgos or any other CLRE official, and they never explicitly told students via email that sprinkler interference caused the alarm. There aren’t enough resources for students who have been displaced, either. There are usually only one or two officials present at the scene, who are immediately swarmed by students with questions that they often cannot answer. Even a small table in the USC where there are some on-loan chargers, pain medicine and other necessities would have made the experience more manageable for everyone affected, especially since students didn’t know when we would be let back into Amsterdam Hall.
I don’t want to seem completely unreasonable — CLRE didn’t start the fire alarm, nor are they responsible for the actions of the person who interfered with it in the first place. But I do expect a certain amount of care to be afforded to GW students who are suddenly without a place to sleep until 3 a.m., and I didn’t see that happening Oct. 23. Two incidents later, and I, perhaps naively, still have hope that CLRE can learn from these mistakes. After all, the third time is a charm.
Ava Hurwitz, a sophomore majoring in international affairs, is the contributing opinions editor.
