Contributed by Allen Holmes
Black mold was found on the floor of a Newman Center 100 resident’s room.
Emma Daniel
Staff Writer
According to Dean of Student Services Herbert Reeves, there have been issues with mold in Newman Center 100, Trojan Village, Clements and multiple fraternity houses.
Reese Tourne, a freshman pre-engineering major from Sweet Water, relocated from Newman Center 100 after he found patches of mold in his common area.
“I found it growing across the floor, but the next day I was looking closer, and it was growing in the chairs in the living room and had spread onto the ceiling and walls,” Tourne said. “One of my suitemates looked in the vents in his room and the living room and found black mold growing there.”
He said that he felt like Troy University tried as hard as possible to help him.
“The RAs tried so hard,” Tourne said. “They came the day I found it (about two weeks ago) and said they’d come back and clean it.”
Tourne elected to move out of the dorm and into Clements Hall because the mold “made me feel sick on the inside.” He said after putting in a request to move, housing showed him his options.
Allen Holmes, a freshman undeclared major from Dothan, said that the mold grew under his bed and in large areas on the floor in Newman Center 100.
“When I first got there (at the beginning of the semester), you couldn’t see any mold, but it was super humid and musty,” he said.
“The smell soaked into my clothes, so when I went home, my parents would ask if there was mold in my room, even before we saw anything.”
According to Holmes, the mold could have affected his health when first moving into Newman Center 100.
“I was perfectly fine, and then I got there, and I immediately got sick,” Holmes said. “(The) same thing happened to my roommate.”
Holmes is not certain that the mold was the cause of sickness.
“It’s not definitive, but it’s plausible,” Holmes said. “I wasn’t forced to move out, but I definitely had to go.”
Reeves said that there were some students who said they were having “respiratory” complaints, so Physical Plant was sent to clean out the air vents.
According to Holmes, the University made attempts to clean the mold when it was brought to its attention.
Housing helped Holmes move to Pace Hall.
“To my knowledge, all of the mold issues have been addressed,” Reeves said, also saying that Physical Plant has been addressing the mold problems as they arise. Reeves said those who moved out of dorms to get away from mold will have prorated fees to cover the cost of the rooms.
“If we move them to another building, we tell them what we have to offer and what the costs are, and then we prorate them based on where they are moving from to where they are moving to,” Reeves said.
Reeves also said some of the mold problems could have begun as early as the summer and been caused by changes in weather patterns.
“Some of them (problems) are self-created, when people turn the thermostat down to 66 degrees, they open the window and then you get humidity and condensation problems,” Reeves said. “We don’t have any rooms that are offline for mold because they’ve all been cleaned, and mold has been eliminated in those areas.”
“(Maintenance) cleaned all the ones that have been reported to us.”