Freshmen students who planned to move into Augusta University’s Oak Hall later this week are instead looking at a semester living off campus as flooding damage in the building from a fifth floor broken pipe will not be fixed for several more months.
The university is helping relocate 400 students, about one-third of the incoming freshman class, to area hotels and apartment complexes. This comes at a time when the university is expecting the largest freshman class in school’s history.
Around 1,150 freshmen, 500 commuters and 650 residential students, have signed up for the fall semester.
The flooding actually occurred on March 28 and repairs have been underway, but students were not notified until early August that the repairs would not be completed in time for the fall semester, and, according to sources who wish not to be named, university staff were still offering applications and taking deposits long after it was clear that Oak Hall was uninhabitable.
Video shows moments leading up to flooding of dormitory. Video provided to The Augusta PRESS through confidential source.
Vice President for Enrollment and Student Affairs Susan Davies declined press interviews, but released a written statement on Aug. 4.
“As we work diligently to secure alternate housing arrangements for our incoming students who have been affected by this delay, our goal is to ensure that they will be able to enjoy a first-semester experience that will be as similar as possible to living on campus in accommodations that are healthy, safe and designed for creating community,” Davies wrote in her statement.
The university has also been slow to acknowledge the cause of the flooding, only stating that it was a “water leak.”
Rumors were, at first, downplayed by university staff that the flooding was caused by students horse playing in a common area on the fifth floor.
Kevin Faigle, media relations specialist for AU, said he was unaware of the cause of the flooding, and he knew nothing of videos of the flooding purportedly trending on TikTok.
The Augusta Press was able to get copies of both videos making the rounds on social media.
One video is from a surveillance camera that shows what appears to be a male and a female student rough-housing in the common area. At one point the male picks up the female from behind, she kicks out at the nearby counter and both fall backwards into a refrigerator/ice maker.
The second video, likely taken by a cell phone, shows students body surfing across the flooded floors, seemingly oblivious to the damage being caused by the cascading water.
According to the unnamed source, the problem was compounded when maintenance staff could not locate the water cut-off valve for the building. By the time the water pipes were cut off, the water had entered the elevator shafts, flooding the rest of the building and destroying the elevator’s lift motors.
The Augusta Fire Department inspected the building on July 28 and along with the elevator issues, found that the entire fire suppression panel as well as all ceiling tiles have to be replaced before Oak Hall is deemed habitable.
The fire department noted that the hallways were filled with ruined furniture and other debris.
A spokesperson for Corvias, the company that owns and operates the building, Mary Humphries, says the company has yet to determine what the total cost estimate will be for the repairs. The company will bear the cost of repairs.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
