Mould continues to be found in some residence rooms after initial problems in November.

Laura Forbes, a first-year graphic design student, has experienced mould problems since she returned to her room earlier in January. The water condensation has been so bad at her window that the only way she could stop it was by putting a towel on her window sill where the problem was forming.

“It was all black and gunky, like literally everything was covered. It’s pretty much rotting the wood,” said Forbes. She has seasonal allergies to mould and informed residence staff who now visit her room every day to check on the condition of her window.

“The maintenance guy said the entire window has to be replaced. But obviously there’s nothing they can do about it now because it’s the middle of winter.”

Forbes has a good relationship with one of the cleaning staff, who comes in every day and scrubs the mould off her window sill, but the water returns every morning.

“My window’s frozen all the time. If I want it open, I need to use a blow dryer. There were icicles. There is physically ice on my wall every morning. And my heating was broken when I came back from Christmas, so I slept with mittens on for like a week, and I wore my jacket while I was in my room.”

Forbes can’t leave belongings on her desk overnight because of the amount of water that drips down every morning. The water creates a black spotty substance which covers her window ledge and spills onto her desk, to the point where before she goes to bed, she removes papers or homework from her desk.

“I wake up and say ‘Oh crap, what is the water touching today?’ One time it dripped down into my drawer, because I had my drawer open, so all my clothes got wet.”

Water had also been leaking from the walls in other suites. Krista Brennan, a first-year early childhood education student, spotted water pooling on the floor in November. By the time they called the front desk, maintenance staff had left and it could not be looked at until the following Monday.

“So when my boyfriend was done class, I told him the story and he went over to the wall and ripped the wet wallpaper off and there was mould all up our wall.”

Brennan and her roommate then began to hear stories from other residents, even a pair of girls on the fourth floor who had to move rooms completely due to mould.

Maintenance staff eventually came to take care of the issues after Brennan’s parents came to speak to the staff at the front desk of residence. They pulled out and replaced the drywall on the bottom half of the wall.

“We had this super big fan to soak up all the moisture and water. Like, hello, if we have water leaking out of the wall, there clearly is a problem.”

Brennan was irritated, and assumed that when she paid $7,000 to live in the building, she would have a much cleaner and safer environment.

“Still today, two months later, the wall is missing wallpaper and I don’t think that they’re going to ever really fix it. It is so frustrating.”

The reports of mould have been downplayed by the residence management.  Sarah Sabourin, manager of Operations and Administration at the residence, said that there is no need for concern. Residents just have to make sure they bring it to the attention of the staff and they will take care of the problem right away.

“We want to make sure that we don’t have mould issues, and students are living in a good environment,” she said. When asked about how many reports of mould have occurred in the building, she said, “We have a handful of students who have had issues in their rooms, and we’ve addressed them because we’ve identified them. But there have been no major concerns at this point.”

The building put out a memo to all residents on how to prevent moisture problems in the rooms. Sabourin explained that they are advising students to never cover their window with anything other than the blinds given, to never cover the intake vents with the bed, and to leave bedroom doors open to promote air flow. One off the biggest things to avoid was turning the heating and cooling fan off, regardless of the fact that the checklist they gave to residents before winter break told them to turn their fans off while they were gone.

The residence building was built in three phases; the first in 2000, the second in 2002 and the third in 2003. With the building being so new, students are beginning to wonder if these problems came up in prior years.

But nothing has been as drastic as this, according to Jon Huffman, a third-year game design student, who was a residence advisor last year. Huffman was surprised when he heard about a building-wide memo.

Huffman never received this type of memo as an RA last year, nor as a student the year before. “I don’t know about before me, but while I was here, I can safely say there was no memo about mould,” he said.

“There were minor cases of mould in my own room, that were along the lines of build up on the window, more like mildew that you could wipe away,” said Huffman

He explained that maintenance, which has had the same staff for years, is on top of issues in the building, including doing two full building reviews before and after the students are living in it.

“It’s surprising to find that suddenly there is such a mould problem,” he said.  “Now, I’m no expert on mould; it could be that it’s a crazy rampant growing mould that came out of nowhere, who knows? But, it’s definitely something that surprised me when I heard it.”

As these disconcerting mould stories spread among residents, other issues have emerged. Shawn Bradley, a first-year police foundations student, lives on the fourth floor of residence. He has not had any mould problems or leaking in his room, a relief as he is badly allergic to mould. Bradley used to be a competitive swimmer, and three years ago, he swallowed mould during a race.

“I came out, had hives and I couldn’t breathe; I had to go to emergency and they said if I ever did that again, I could die,” he said. When asked what he would do if he did have mould in his room, Bradley shook his head.

“If I was living in it for a long period of time, I could have breathing problems or could potentially die.”

While mould can range from fairly harmless to potentially dangerous, it is stressed that students living in residence inform maintenance staff immediately, as it can get worse over time if not handled properly.