With the Buffalo snow about to pile up, some students in the Ellicott Complex are getting ready to bundle up - to do their laundry.
This semester, many students in Porter Quadrangle are cut off from laundry facilities and tunnel access to other buildings, due to construction on the ground floors of buildings 1, 2, 3 and 7, forcing them to detour across the terrace to carry out day-to-day activities.
The Porter renovations are taking place to give way to the new Student/Parent Response Center, where students and parents will be able to receive information on registering for classes, student records, financial aid, billing and academic advisement.
"(The center) allowed us to bring together all the organizations and areas together in a tight net," Sullivan said. "To serve students, we have to have student service employees feel more comfortable."
Sarah Frank, a senior psychology major who has lived in Porter for two years, said the renovations pose everything from minor inconveniences, like the loss of vending machines and study areas, to major problems, like having to go outside in order to reach buildings 5 and 6, where the laundry rooms are located.
"I'm dragging my underwear and bras through a crowd of male construction workers," Frank said.
Daniella Anisimova, a junior management major, said she is not looking forward to the winter season in Porter.
"With the cold weather around the corner, it's a great inconvenience to go outside to do laundry," said Anisimova.
According to minutes from an Oct. 8 Porter Hall council meeting, students said that during the first few weeks of the semester, they used routine ways of getting to buildings 5 and 6. As the semester went on, and the construction period got longer, doors were blocked, forcing students to exit their buildings to get to campus provided services, such as laundry rooms.
Samantha Letson, a junior physical therapy major, said she was surprised that a school the size of UB would not make accommodations for students during the renovation period.
"I pay a lot of money to go to this school, and I think they could afford to build a tunnel to the tunnel," Letson said.
Sean Sullivan, vice provost for enrollment and planning, said he was surprised to hear of the problem and was under the impression that students had ways to get from building to building, despite the renovations.
"We heard of some problems, but I didn't know the extent of it," Sullivan said.
Before the construction started, Sullivan created several committees to work out foreseeable problems for students. During the planning stages of the project, access problems for students were considered, but something must have been overlooked, he said.
With the assistance of Porter residents, Sullivan said he would create a new student committee to address these issues and work in conjunction with the university to figure out how to ease the inconvenience of students.
"We don't like to create problems," Sullivan said. "We are in the business of solving them."
