Construction near Kilgo Quadrangle has left some residents unsatisfied.
Part of the West Union renovation project, the construction has brought student complaints regarding noise and hours. Administrators, however, said that they are working to mitigate the problems.
“We’ve both been woken up, me and my roommate, on a lot of occasions, especially in the mornings," said Kilgo N resident Alex Wertheim, a senior. "Sometimes it gets so loud that once you wake up you can’t fall back asleep and so it’s been pretty bad.”
Students were told that work would begin at 8 a.m. each day, but some claim that the workers start earlier.
"My friends live in a room just overlooking the construction, and they say that [the workers] start earlier than 8 a.m.," said sophomore Carolyn Peterseim, a Kilgo resident.
She suggested to the Kilgo House Council that the windows might be soundproofed, an idea brought about from conversations with friends. House Council took the idea to the administration, she said, and it is now being worked on.
The windows will be soundproofed during winter break, said Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta.
“The construction that is going on is going to take two years, so it is a long term process," Moneta noted. "We are installing soundproofing into the windows that face the construction site in Kilgo. That will happen by January.”
Moneta said he was not aware of construction occurring outside of prescribed hours, but he would take action if he received information that something of this nature was happening.
He explained that a meeting was organized last Wednesday with administrators and Kilgo residents to improve the transparency of the process.
“We know details of the project and we know what the construction timeline will be and we share those with the Kilgo residents,” Moneta said.
Peterseim said she appreciates the University's efforts and feels that it has the students' best interests in mind, but also noted a lack of openness earlier in the year.
“They did not tell us before we signed up for housing arrangements that there would be construction, because I think this would have affected many peoples' decisions,” Peterseim said. “The University is for the current students, not just for the future students, and the current students need the ability to study in their dorms during the day and this is being compromised.”
However, the situation is not the same all over the dorm. Wings on the opposite side of the construction are spared.
“I don’t hear any construction noises," said sophomore Madhu Ganesh, a resident of Kilgo J. "But I know my friend who lives in Kilgo N wakes up every morning at eight because the construction starts at eight and that’s kind of her alarm clock.”
Senior Tim Kreulen, a resident assistant on the third floor of Kilgo N, said that although he received a number of complaints at the beginning of the year, they have since tapered off.
“I haven’t heard any major complaints from my residents [recently]," he said. "Then again, they might be hearing the noise and they might recognize that I can’t personally do anything about it, so maybe they just haven’t told me.”
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