Can Lottie Jane Mabee Hall’s living conditions support a bigger student populace?
President Stacy Leeds has a goal for the enrollment of “10,000 students 10 years from now” for the University of Tulsa. TU’s dormitories will carry the brunt of the massive amount of students joining campus, and one of these is Lottie Jane Mabee Hall. Lottie Jane can hold over 200 students, but currently the hall holds less than half its capacity, at 93 students. Even while holding a small number of students, the facilities and maintenance are struggling to keep up. If the school manages in the next 10 years to get the student body to double, will Lottie Jane be ready?
The size of the rooms in Lottie Jane is one of the positive things talked about among residents. Emily Crumpler, freshman and co-president of the Lottie Jane hall government, said, “I’m happy with the room size but I’ve been told that my room is bigger than most people’s.” Freshman psychology major and Lottie resident Sabrina Foley said, “The rooms are really nice because they’re really big. … [My roommate and I] like our room a lot. … We have a lot of space to have friends over which is really nice. And we never have any troubles with storage or anything.” The size of the room could be a very attractive thing to new students coming into the university.
Unfortunately, although the rooms in Lottie Jane may be large and appealing, there are many other issues that outweigh the positives. One issue is the thinness of the walls. Crumpler notes that “the door near my room squeaks really loud and wakes me up at three in the morning. Our dorm is at the end of our hallway, [and] me and my roommate can hear every conversation down the hall, and in the study room.” The walls in Lottie Jane are super thin, allowing people in their dorms to hear conversations in the hallway. This is a problem because it limits the privacy of those living in the dorms and causes sound issues when wandering the halls.
Another issue with Lottie Jane is its placement with the rest of campus. Lottie Jane is on the far west side of campus, so if your classes are in Keplinger or even Oliphant, you would have to walk potentially 10 or more minutes across campus to get to class. This means that residents have to plan out their day pretty extensively if they are going to get to class on time. Jun Lee, a freshman computer simulation and gaming major said, “I think it’s fine for the most part. … I think it’s chill. I like that Lottie Jane was placed in a good area of campus.” Barto opposes this, saying, “I really just didn’t like where it was on campus. I had classes across campus on the other side and so I had quite a long walk. … I lived there my first semester so I had to wake up a lot earlier, and 18-year-old me was not the biggest fan of that.” Lottie is placed in a good spot in relation to Pat Case and the library, but if anybody wants to go anywhere else on campus, they have to plan to take a walk.
Lottie Jane was remodeled back in 2022, and as of now there is still an active fundraiser to pay for renovating the building. However, even after this renovation, many people still complain about the bathrooms and basement. The basement is for the most part empty and uninviting, with random chairs and couches placed around it, excepting the laundry room, which is not any better. The cracking paint and grimy walls do not help the atmosphere. The kitchen is also in the basement and is not much better than the rest of the floor. The kitchen often smells quite strongly and is uninviting and bare. Crumpler said, “The basement creeps me out a bit. I know lots of people have problems with the laundry room. [I] haven’t had any issues with it. I’ve used the kitchen once, it is a little scary. We’re supposed to be able to rent things for the kitchen, but [we] can’t rent anything.” The laundry machines have stopped working for some people, and even heard of their clothes being ripped up. They tend to be fickle, which does not embolden trust in the machines. The university has had plans for years to fix the basement and refurbish the kitchen, but they both have remained the same. Will the basement be remodeled before the doubling of students, or will a full Lottie Jane be forced to deal with broken laundry machines and the creepy basement?
On top of that, the laundry machines have not been the only facilities that have been acting up for the past semester. Current residents in Lottie Jane have had issues with broken air conditioning units, a lack of hot water and even broken showers. For the first few weeks after move-in, an entire floor did not have access to hot water and certain halls lost it again a few weeks later. The students were told on GroupMe that maintenance had been notified, but that “it is not at the top of their priority list.”
Entire floors losing hot water and students just hoping that maintenance will get to it eventually is not inspiring to hope. But even after the water was fixed, students are still having problems with the bathrooms. The showers still do not tend to work, to the point that some students have to walk to the other side of the floor to get a working one. Foley said that “they don’t get hot unless two of them are turned on at the same time. … There’s only one good shower with good temperature and water pressure, and it’s not even in our hall. … Like, the GroupMe is always blowing up about the showers or all this stuff” Crumpler added, “None of the bathrooms work. Ever.” There is clear irritation among the students about not having working bathrooms, and the facilities are having issues with under half capacity. If Lottie Jane was at full capacity, they would only break more often and cause more problems for students.
The residents still have as many complaints and concerns as they did four years ago. The basement is still to this day called creepy by the residents and there are still complaints about the bathrooms. If the dormitory is currently under capacity, and yet is still having issues with maintenance, how will the dorm be able to keep up with the incoming residents in the coming years, especially with the push for even more students?
