The office of facilities is stretching its dollars further this year, rolling back on services due to budget pressures within the division, a senior administrator said.
Facilities services set aside its annual painting projects and didn’t complete room cleanings, Senior Vice President for Student and Academic Support Services Robert Chernak said, because funding was funneled into the division’s higher-priority projects.
Chernak said he found out last month that students were seeing “deteriorating room conditions” because residence halls were not cleaned and inspected “as thoroughly as they should have been.”
This year’s budget for facilities remains the same as past years, Senior Associate Vice President of Operations Alicia Knight said, adding that “there have been no reductions in our activities.”
But facilities is “dealing with a crunch” due to mounting costs for utilities and spiking housekeeping expenses that expand with the University’s growing square footage, Chernak said.
He said Facilities Services suspended its painting program this summer, which would have painted several buildings based on a yearly rotation schedule. Knight declined to comment how many buildings would have seen a fresh coat of paint this fall, or how much the University saved by putting the project on hold. The University spent $250,000 painting buildings this summer, according to the University’s fiscal year 2012 capital budget, but Knight did not say how many buildings this pool of funds covered, or the cost of the program last year.
Knight said the funds saved from this project were shuffled into Guthridge Hall renovations, which included the replacement of two elevators and a system upgrade for the building’s fire alarms and sprinkler systems. The project costs $2.05 million, according to this fiscals year’s capital budget.
The University’s head of operations said the division “provided cleaning to all rooms,” but said early arrival due to Hurricane Irene “caused a larger than normal number of rooms to be impacted by earlier than expected move ins.”
The University allowed students to move in one day early because of the storm.
“When students move in early or the room’s prior occupant moves out late, we experience challenges in ensuring that rooms are adequately prepared,” Knight said in an e-mail.
Matt Galewski, chair of the Residence Hall Association, said his organization works with facilities services regularly to address student concerns.
“Based on conversations with facilities, they are working as hard as they can with the resources they have,” Galewski said. “The overarching issue is that we’re not funneling enough resources into these efforts.”
Galewski said RHA’s biggest focus this fall has been student complaints that FIXit responses are much slower this year.
A possible solution to the facilities pinch is to use funds from the Innovation Task Force to fund renovations, Chernak said, explaining that the student life division does not have access to the ITF savings, which are siphoned into Provost Steven Lerman’s discretionary budget. The task force finds savings throughout the University’s processes and operations and siphons them toward academics.
As of this November, the University has found about $34 million in savings. Funds have been put toward the increase in Columbian College of Arts and Sciences advisers, the addition of a degree audit system and research efforts across the University.
Resources saved within an individual school remain in that school and are administered under the purview of each dean. Chernak explained that resources saved in his department are funneled into the campus-wide funding pool.
The initiative has set aside $11.2 million to spend in fiscal year 2012 on various academic projects, including the launch of an online degree auditing tool and support for the reorganization of the Medical Center.
In addition to the Innovation Task Force initiative, “where the focus for the reallocations are being primarily channeled, at least now, into academic initiatives,” Chernak said the University has also sustained its commitment to fixed tuition plans and financial aid.
“To allocate to cover what becomes a more emerging priority for the institution, some of the things that would normally be taking place in other departments don’t get funded to the level people think should get funding,” Chernak said.
How can the President justify a million dollar salary when students are living with holes in the ceilings of buildings? Some faculty offices in the Humanities and Social Sciences buildings haven’t been painted in decades. The carpets are stained with a decade’s worth of dirt. The heating/cooling units are growing mold. Show me the money!
Gasp, “The heating/cooling units are growing mold”?! Don’t let Knapp, Fix-it, or Health and Safety known because none of them will do jack about it. For some reason i doubt anything is amiss at the lauded F Street Club.
The ceiling in this room should be fixed immediately obviously this room isn’t on the admissions tour. If I had seen Thurston hall on the tour my daughter would not be at GWU.
say, Max
I am very aware of the substandard student housing. The fix it people are just plain liars. They don’t fix nuthin’ (yea that’s what they fix – nuthin’). The residence halls of GW that I have seen and experienced are filthy, decrepit, and dirty (mold, mildew, and just plain filth). If it took Bob Chernak this long to realize this where has he been, maybe wining and cheesing it at the F club.
This self-styled university should be ashamed of itself on account of its filthy, substandard housing. I am amazed that the students tolerate this – are you all idiots? The university thinks you are. When you make a complaint they flat out lie to your face. They have been in DC too long and have picked up the lingo – deny it, stonewall it, and when all else fails, lie about it.
This is a major failing of this university that needs to be corrected. Moreover, it is the attitude of the administration that will eventually be its undoing. Why do you think it slid to near 300 in the international rankings. Okay, big deal (made a big deal by Bob Chernak) they got up to 50 or so in the U S News and World Report for US. Apparently, that ranking did not consider the decrepit, filty, moldy, rat infested housing for which GW is now famous.
“Dorms like Palaces” ha, keep relying on that one spurious note for as long as you can – you will still attract suckers.
oh yeah, I forgot, GW is a slumlord, put that in your F street club and smoke it
Prior to transferring to GW Law, I attended a similar-sized University and another law school. I also spent two summers living in GW dorms as an undergrad. GW’s facilities are the worst I’ve seen, particularly for a University that is regularly among the most expensive in the nation.
The entire law school is a musty, old mess. Carpets, paint, and lighting are terrible. The Law Library and Gelman Library look like they haven’t been upgraded in decades.
The University should be ashamed of its dorms and academic facilities. I can’t wait to get out.