Hanah Jun

Cuccia, now a sophomore at Georgetown University, and her roommate told a maintenance worker about the mold, and workers came to clean it off a few days later. But her problems did not end there.

“About a month later, I started getting really, really terrible pains in my ears,” said Cuccia, 19. She had an ear infection, caused by black mold spores.

Enduring less-than-ideal living conditions is something of a rite of passage for many college students. While the cost of higher education keeps rising, though, outpacing inflation every year since 1985, maintenance of student dormitories at many institutions has not always kept up.

In interviews and exchanges with dozens of students across the country, heating and cooling issues were the most frequent complaints. But some reported much more serious problems, including vermin and mold.

It can be difficult to reconcile such problems with university endowments that can reach billions of dollars. But the institutions often have access to just a small percentage of their endowments in any single year, and much of that money may be earmarked for student financial aid. Even relatively wealthy institutions can find themselves with tight operating budgets and little means to finance building projects other than appealing to donors.

“For alumni giving at universities, you want something attractive, new, something you can put your name on,” said Anthony Lyons, a commissioning engineer with experience on university projects who now works in building code compliance. “You want to be the person who donates a library, a lobby, a student center, a building, a whole program. I know it’s hard to have money for renovations.”

Some students are speaking up, taking to social media to expose disrepair that they said their schools were failing to promptly address. They have set up Facebook pages and Instagram profiles to vent about or make light of campus issues large and small.

On the Instagram account @georgetown.hotmess, created by Georgetown students in 2016, scrolling through the photos can feel like a visit to a dystopian ruin, not a picturesque Gothic-revival university in Washington. Ceilings are collapsing. Black mold is growing on walls. Rodents, both dead and alive, make several appearances. A young man tries to belly-slide down a flooded hallway.

A Georgetown spokeswoman, Meghan Dubyak, pointed out that last year was Washington’s wettest on record, and that the university had “initiated proactive steps to prevent mold and promptly respond to all reported cases within two business days.” She added that the Georgetown board of directors had recently allocated $75 million to improve campus infrastructure, with a focus on student residences.

Facilities workers at several universities acknowledged that there were dismal conditions in some buildings on their campuses and pointed to aging infrastructure, shortages of funds and a lack of political will to make upkeep a priority. They said they were forced to focus on reactive maintenance, fixing problems as they came up, rather than creating and following a comprehensive maintenance plan.

“It’s all gotten so bad for many, many years that now it’s reaching the breaking point,” Lyons said. “Frankly, some of these conditions are disgusting.”

Sometimes the effects on students can be long-lasting.

Not long after Sarah Melton moved into her University of Oklahoma dormitory last fall, she came down with a rash, headaches and cold symptoms. Soon she was having mood swings.

By November, she had withdrawn from the university and tested positive for mold poisoning. She has since transferred to a school in Texas, her home state, and said she was optimistic about the future. But she remains worried about any lasting effects of the problems she had while at Oklahoma.

Kesha Keith, a spokeswoman for the university, said she could not comment on individual cases. She said the school had taken many steps to keep residence halls clean, including hiring a contractor to treat air units and bathroom vents in every residence-hall room.

“This unfortunately has become more of a lifelong issue,” said Melton, 19, who has been encouraging other college students to look for signs of mold when they move into their dorms. “I wish I would’ve just walked into the bathroom and looked up. We never thought to do that.”

Heating and cooling can be another major challenge for universities with buildings that may be decades or even centuries old.

Isabella Henderson, a junior at Brown University, said she had endured a host of problems in her dormitory, beginning with mold. In the late-summer heat and humidity, the walls would sweat and the ceilings drip, ruining books. The paint peeled, coming off the wall in foot-long strips. Henderson said she developed a heat rash and could not walk without pain.

Brown normally does not allow students to bring air conditioners to campus, but the humidity and heat in her room were so bad, she said, that facilities workers recommended that she buy one for the space.

“I wasn’t sleeping well,” Henderson said. “It definitely affected a lot of my academic experience, especially because it was frustrating to be in physical discomfort.”

Brian E. Clark, a Brown spokesman, said that while there may be isolated issues with dorm rooms, they did not indicate a widespread problem at the university. He said the university inspected every room each year, and quickly evaluated any urgent issues. “Our paint program alone includes improvements to more than 75% of rooms each year,” he said.

Few students move into their dorms expecting ideal conditions. Some said they felt they should simply accept the conditions they found, rather than appear ungrateful for the privilege of attending college. While plenty of students defect for off-campus apartments, the units that students on a budget can afford may not be any better maintained than the dorms. And some universities do not give students the choice, requiring them to live on campus for their first year or longer.

“I kind of just have an assumption that there are some things about college facilities that are just bad, like dorms are never just amazing, food is never just amazing,” said Cuccia, the Georgetown sophomore. “It’s about finding the line between ‘This is what going to college is like’ and where it is actually unacceptable.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/us/college-dorms-mold-health.html" id="9d703dc7-1c36-3c4f-a1cb-391adfa3c379">The New York Times</a>.

When College Dormitories Become Health Hazards

Annemarie Cuccia saw the black mold spread through rooms in her dormitory — five on her floor in a span of about two weeks last September. Soon she spotted some mold in her own room as well, growing on walls and furniture.

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Hanah Jun

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When College Dormitories Become Health Hazards