Woodcrest Hall flood forces students to move

While it is normal to see Cabrini’s campus active with students moving their belongings into dorms, houses and apartment buildings at the beginning of a school year, it is definitely not typical to see that happening in the middle of a second semester.

Due to previously scheduled practices and games, a majority of Cabrini’s lacrosse team chose to remain living on campus during spring break, from Friday, Feb. 26 to Sunday, March 6. Having players eager to practice and dorm buildings without resident assistants to monitor the students turned out to be a recipe for disaster.

On the evening of Friday, March 4, a few freshman members of the lacrosse team were playing wall ball on the second floor of Woodcrest, a residence hall that has been housing students since 1969. When a student was in the repetitive “wall ball” process of simply bouncing a lacrosse ball off of a wall in the hallway and catching it with his lacrosse stick, the ball shot up to the ceiling and hit a sprinkler. That then caused all of the sprinklers to simultaneously turn on and start spraying water.

Flustered and taken off guard, the student was not sure what to do.

“The sprinklers were on so long that one of the water pipes in the ceiling on the first floor of Woodcrest burst,” Isiah Sanders, a freshman student who remained on campus over break and was in Woodcrest when the incident occurred, said. “Someone told Public Safety eventually, but by the time the officers got to the building, it was already flooded.”

Yes, the combination of a lacrosse ball and Woodcrest’s old construction resulted in its first and second floors to flood with two inches of water before Public Safety officers even had the opportunity to attempt to save the day. Within minutes, the power of social media also spread the word to students both on and off campus.

Tweets about the incident included, “Woodcrest more like watercrest,” “good things always come to end :/ @woodcrest,”  “RIP Woodcrest,” and, “People say you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone. Truth is, you knew what you had, you just never thought you’d lose it @WOODCREST.”

Nick Rotandi, a freshman student and Woodcrest resident, said, “I went home for spring break but ended up coming back to Cabrini that night after seeing Snapchat stories of what happened. When I got to Woodcrest, I saw Public Safety officers on the outside, and two inches of water, busted tile, and ruined belongings on the inside. Since my room was flooded, my fan broke and my carpet was ruined too.”

While Public Safety officers and Residence Life officials worked in the building to minimize damage as much as they could and as quickly as they could, Cabrini administration made the decision to have them relocate Woodcrest residents to other residence halls, houses or apartments on campus.

“Students obviously couldn’t live in the building anymore,” Akirah Massenburg, the assistant director at Residence Life, said. “We looked at all the open space we had on campus, did our best to keep roommates together, and accommodated them as best as we could. It’s discouraging that a community was broken up, and it’s our job to still foster that community, even though Woodcrest residents are all in different halls.”

Residence Life officials began making calls and emails to Woodcrest residents on the afternoon of Saturday, March 5, to discuss the overall situation and relocation process with them. However, for some students that were not informed through social media, that was not soon enough.

“We didn’t officially find out until 2 o’clock on Saturday,” Sarah Ryan, another freshman student and Woodcrest resident, said. “I don’t like how we found out so late.”

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, March 6, students were permitted to enter their rooms in Woodcrest to collect essential items, such as clothing and academic materials, prior to relocating.

Susan Kramer, the director of Residence Life, informed students that Cabrini’s insurance company requested for them to leave damaged items in their rooms for assessment purposes. In the moving out process, students also had to be escorted by a Cabrini employee.

“It was a bit stressful moving all of our things out in such a short amount of time,” Woodcrest resident Annie Gorski said. “Everything had to be out by 6 o’clock on Sunday, and you couldn’t get anything without being escorted to your room by an RA or a Public Safety Officer.”

After a hectic 48-hour period, by the morning of Monday, March 7, all freshman students who resided in Woodcrest were successfully relocated to the Xavier Residence Hall, East Residence Hall, West Residence Hall or one of the seven houses. While this solved the immediate problem of housing, it was still generally inconvenient to students all over Cabrini’s campus.

“I just moved from Xavier to Woodcrest at the beginning of the second semester, and now I have to move for the third time to House 6,” freshman Gerard Bellino said. “This is a burden not only for us as freshman, but for upperclassmen as well.”

Since Woodcrest was one of the two residence halls that only housed freshman students, freshman students have now been forced to fill in all of the empty spots in upperclassmen buildings and rooms all across campus.

“It’s a bit awkward, and we get the feeling that the upperclassmen are annoyed and that we’re invading their space,” Annie Gorski, who was one of four freshmen who were moved into a lounge in House 2 that is now a makeshift room for four, said.

“I’m uncomfortable with where I am now,” Afua Awuah, another Woodcrest resident, said. “I’m in House 7 with a whole bunch of upperclassmen that I don’t even know.”

Despite these comments, Massenburg said that the majority of students dealing with this situation have had positive attitudes and a lot of courage. Upperclassmen such as Francis Xavier Cornely Jr., have also reached out to Woodcrest residents as well, as he wrote a message on the Cabrini Class of 2019 Facebook page saying, “If you have relocated to West residence hall and/or The apartments, please feel free to ask me for help if you need it. I am really familiar with this side of campus. I hope you are adjusting well. Think positive!”

At the end of the day, regardless of age and residence halls, Cabrini community pulled together.

Upperclassmen Samantha Murray tweeted, “Sending prayers to everyone who lives in Woodcrest. Hope the damage to any personal items are minimal and you move back into your homes soon.”