An overflowing toilet flooded Harbin Hall’s third floor with sewage Nov. 11, filling rooms and destroying residents’ belongings for the third time in seven weeks.
The 18 residents of a boys’ cluster, who were previously affected by similar flooding Sept. 30 and Oct. 27, saw the bathroom overflow around 6 p.m. and reported the leak to Facilities Management. Though Facilities Management arrived by 8 p.m., sewage destroyed the same belongings that residents replaced just weeks earlier.
The Nov. 11 flood leaked through to the floors below, including the Harbin Key Room on the first floor, according to images and videos obtained by The Hoya.
In an email sent to all Harbin residents, Donna Poillucci, Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Residential Services, and Jay Gruber, Associate Vice President of Public Safety, said objects improperly flushed down the toilets had caused all three floods. They added that Georgetown University’s administration was investigating possible violations of the Student Code of Conduct.
“Our investigation of the pipes has determined that there were inappropriate objects flushed down the toilet that created a blockage, including an aluminum can,” Poillucci and Gruber said in the email. “This is being investigated as vandalism and destruction of property.”
“This is the third case of inappropriate objects causing an overflow in this bathroom this semester. Items other than toilet paper should never be flushed down toilets as they can block plumbing,” Poillucci and Gruber added.
Harbin third-floor resident Charlie Schneider (MSB ’28) said his cluster used paper towels to block sewage from spreading because Facilities Management was unavailable until 8 p.m.
“We started building paper towel walls around the doors of everybody’s rooms,” Schneider told The Hoya. “I thought we did a decent job — it wasn’t getting into anybody’s rooms at the time.”
Schneider added that a university official sent his Residential Assistant (RA) a picture of a valve in the toilet that would shut off the water flow, so Schneider waded into the flooded bathroom to find the valve.
“I had some rubber gloves from a Halloween costume, so naturally I had to go in and turn the valve off,” Schneider said. “I’m stepping through the toilet water in the bathroom, and there’s literal pieces of shit floating around the floor. I go to look for the valve they told me to turn, and it’s just not there. The toilet looks nothing like the picture that they’ve sent us.”
The university provided an option for half of the residents to stay in the Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin Avenue for the night, but it did not provide any details until 11:27 p.m, according to an email sent to the residents by the Office of Residential Living.
Schneider said the university initially told residents the rooms would be cleaned that night, but the third-party cleaning company — contracted by the university — did not arrive until between 10:30 and 11 p.m., forcing residents to stay in the common room until they received the late-night email offering the hotel option.
“We didn’t know what to do — our rooms had been flooded,” Schneider said. “The sanitation teams weren’t even there yet, and they were telling us our rooms were going to be clear to sleep in — that’s strange. The past two times, they just made us sleep in the rooms, so we were worried that they would be doing that again.”
Luca Nascone (MSB ’28), who lives in the cluster, said he was skeptical about the cause of the flood being inappropriate objects.
“I don’t know who would do that, and it’s the third time it’s happened,” Nascone said. “If it had happened once, maybe that makes sense and then you prevent it. You wouldn’t do something like that again, but it’s been happening. I’m getting a little concerned.”
Sam McVey (MSB ’28), another resident of the cluster, said he was uneasy about the university’s statement that the floods were caused by an individual flushing aluminum cans.
“They keep referencing some anonymous individual who’s flushing things down the toilet but we haven’t seen anything empirical to make us believe that,” McVey told The Hoya. “It’s happening at very random times of day, so there’s not a whole lot of rhyme or reason to it.”
Schneider said he expected the university to have a better response plan, especially after the two previous floods.
“This had already happened twice, and you think that the third time around, they’d be better,” Schneider said. “Listen, I understand the first time it happened, everyone was like, ‘Holy crap, what do we do?’ The second time, it was the same deal. By the third time, you’d think they’d have some sort of procedure in place, but instead they’re texting us pictures of valves that don’t exist.”
Nascone said he was not confident the university would be able to prevent another flood.
“I don’t even want to put anything on my floor anymore because I’m worried it’s going to get ruined,” Nascone said.
“It was really poorly handled from Georgetown,” Nascone added. “It seemed like they didn’t really care about us.”
