Scott Schell fixes a door at QU. -Michele Barletta

There’s nothing more frustrating than the rattling sound of your dorm room air-conditioner slowly beginning to fail you. But just how many students on campus actually know what the first step to getting it repaired is?

David Schell, who oversees the work order process at Quincy University believes that there is a portion of students on campus who don’t know how to submit a work order. David has worked with campus residence life to try and get a handout on the process put up on the bulletin boards in the residence buildings.

Joel Mcilroy is one of the students on campus who has had a mixture of experiences with submitting work orders. Joel transferred to QU in the spring of 2019 and didn’t have to submit a request until last fall when his window wouldn’t close properly. It wasn’t until then that he realized he didn’t actually know what to do until learning of the system through friends.

Students on campus have had mixed experiences with the system. Some are satisfied and happy with the job and time taken to complete it. However, some students are left with the frustration of having to live for a period of days and sometimes weeks before their issues are seen to.

“I submitted a few work orders last semester and never got my window fixed. When I arrived back this semester it was too cold to live with a broken window, so I called the emergency maintenance number and they came that night,” Mcilroy said.

Schell says that the response time varies for each request based on what the problem is and the availability of staff.

“We really only have one staff member of each expertise, and generally a lot of our problems only come in bulk,” Schell said.

Schell and his team have adopted a triage style of work, where problems such as no heat and no hot water take preference over smaller issues.

Craig Chisholm has had nothing but good experiences with submitting work orders.

“During my freshman year I had a lot of small issues like an unstable bed and a broken air-conditioner that were quickly fixed within a day or two of me submitting a work order,” Chisholm said.

However Chisholm does believe that there are a lot of students on campus who don’t know how to submit work orders.

“Often guys come up to me and ask me what they’re supposed to do if something in their room is broken. Mostly freshman but sometimes even juniors and seniors,” Chisholm said.

Schell believes that there’s always room for improvement in any system and says that they’re always learning and trying to improve, however he is quite happy with how the system works now.

“Things have changed quite a lot since I got here three years ago, we’ve changed a lot of things and I think they’ve gone in quite a positive manner,” Schell said.

Schell was full of praise and support for his maintenance team, who some weeks find themselves with close to 100 requests, but who do their best to get to each student as quickly as possible.