As I was leaving River Campus at 3:35 p.m. after seeing the wonderful Percussion Ensemble’s Family Holiday Concert, I saw on my phone I missed a call a few minutes ago from my roommate, Alexis Darnstaedt.

Calling her back, she answered in a panic telling me we had a problem with our bathroom. She had noticed part of our bathroom rug by the toilet was wet along with the corner of the bathroom. She then told me it had leaked into our room.

Alexis informed me two of my small rugs had gotten wet and she had put them in a washing machine. After getting off the phone with her I called the Myers’s Hall duty phone and received no answer.

Arriving at the dorm, I stopped by the front desk to get a package and ask if someone was aware of the situation in my room. I thought Alexis was exaggerating the situation and it wasn’t as big of a deal.

However, when I got to my second-floor room in Myers Hall I found the problem wasn’t exaggerated at all. I found that the problem had actually gotten worse.

Water was coming from the toilet and the shower and flowing fast into our room. Around 4 p.m. one of the Myers’s Resident Assistants called DPS so they could notify someone on call for Facilities Management.

Water steadily flowed into your room for a good 40 minutes or so. When it stop we had about 2 inches of standing water in part of our room.

I am counting my blessing because only part of my room had water. I am also lucky to have amazing resident assistants who helped move things out of the room into the hallway and sat in the hallway with us waiting for Facilities Management.

My roommate had a large tan shag rug that soaked up most of the water flowing into the room. So the rug stopped it from spreading. The water had a terrible sewer smell to it, so we decided to get rid of the rug. Alexis, our hall director, three of our RAs, and myself got the rug up and moved it to the dumpster. We also moved our three drawer dressers so we could see all where the water got.

While waiting for Facilities Management I decided to open the package I received. I was happy to find cookies inside and be able to have something good among all the craziness going on around me. Along with eating cookies, I started to wash some of the sopping wet clothes I had.

Around 5 p.m. a man from facilities showed up and started to work. About the same time, my roommate had to leave to go home for the rest of the weekend to be on time for plans she has had for two weeks.

The man from facilities removed the toilet from the floor and put it in the shower so he could get a look at the drain. He informed me that he found a clump of baby wipes about 50 feet down in the drain. With the wipes being so deep in the drain he told me it could be from another room, myself, my roommate, suitemates or even the people who lived there last year. Questioning my roommate and suitemates about the problem, I learned it couldn’t have been from us.

This was not the first time we have had problems with drainage in our suite. On Nov. 27, my suitemate told me the shower wasn’t draining correctly. We called in a work order on Nov. 28, Facilities Managment send someone and we were told the drain was fixed. To our knowledge, it was. The shower went back to draining as it normally would.

Someone also showed up to clean the room as the man from facilities was finishing up and leaving. He mopped up all the water and disinfected the floor, toilet, shower and the bottoms of our furniture. He also left a fan in the room to get rid of the smell and dry everything out.

The hall director had arranged for me to be put up in a different room for the night, mainly due to the smell. Around 6:45 p.m. I tossed pajamas and a toothbrush in a bag and grabbed bedding and headed to the new room.

What made everything easier to handle is the help I received from the RAs and how kind and understanding the people from facilities were. They explained what was going on in my room every step of the way and just made the whole situation a little less stressful.

Along with the stress of finals, I’m now dealing with the stress of drying out clothes and having my room moved around. On the bright side, most of my furniture is now moved 6 inches from the wall, so now I am really ready to leave for break.