'Our room was shaking': Construction on East Campus impacts students

Each morning, some students on East Campus wake up not to the sound of their alarms but the rumble of construction.

Construction began in August for a new dorm near the Bell Tower and Southgate residence halls on East Campus, which is expected to house roughly 250 students and will replace the current East, Jarvis and Epworth dorms. According to administrators, the new dorm will be completed by January 2018. However, students shared that the construction has impacted their daily lives.

First-year Daniel Castro, a Bell Tower resident, described the construction as annoying and inconvenient.

“I’ve been woken up a few times by some of the construction noise,” he said. “When they’re drilling, you can tell they’re drilling, cause it’s like boom, boom, boom.”

Some also noted that they can feel the ground shake from the drilling.

“Our room was shaking, like vibrating,” said first-year Allison McHorse, who lives in Bell Tower. “It was annoying. You could feel the vibrations.”

She said that the lack of privacy is a concern for her because construction workers work right outside her room and can sometimes see inside it.

Bell Tower students also noted that the dorm construction has disturbed their studying habits, with distracting noises throughout the day instead of just in the morning.

Joe Gonzalez, dean for residential life, explained that the most common complaint received from construction projects centers around the back-up alarms made when construction equipment moves in reverse.

“[Back-up alarms] are of a nature that you notice them,” Gonzalez said. “That’s their purpose, they want people to notice them because it’s a safety policy.”

He added that the construction of the new dorm was designed and planned to have a “minimal” impact on nearby students.

“We’ve been pleased, actually, thus far that it doesn’t seem to have impacted the populations—particularly in Southgate and Bell Tower—in any dramatic way,” he said.

Gonzalez noted, however, that this could change over time, and that students would likely be affected in some way due to their proximity to the construction.

Although the construction is equally close to Southgate and Bell Tower, students living in Southgate reported being less disturbed by its activity. First-year Rielle Quiambao, a Southgate resident, noted that she has barely noticed the work being done. 

She explained that although the construction was a “nuisance in the morning” earlier this year, it now does not affect her life.

“I don’t really have any qualms with the construction because personally I can’t hear it,” she said.

Despite the complaints about construction, Quiambao and Castro both expressed their support for the expansion and improvement of residential dorms.

“The University, in the end, is trying to expand, so I can understand that [they’re] doing this for us,” Castro said. “Even though it can be a slight inconvenience, in the long run, it’s beneficial for current Duke students and future Duke students.”

A $25 million project, the new dorm will be constructed to resemble Bell Tower with its large individual rooms and central air conditioning.