Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Utsler)

By Dan Hoyt

With finals week approaching many on-campus residents have begun scrambling to pack-up their possessions and get ready to ship out for the summer, but packing can be a daunting task.

Tricia Woodward Complex Director for Templin and Lewis residence halls said many residents refuse to plan ahead and always wait until the last minute to try to get out. The Department of Student Housing has the final day to stay in the dorms in on Friday and Friday night many students will still be scrambling to move as many of their possessions out as quickly as they can.

“They usually just don’t think about anything beyond their finals, which I can understand since they need to be focused on their school work,” she said. “But they need to put a little thought into it.”

While some on-campus residents struggle to move out, some communicate with their roommates to work together and move out smoothly.

She has been conducting meetings with her assistant complex directors--A.C.D.s-- and her resident assistants--R.A.s—over the past several weeks to discuss problems they will encounter while getting everyone moved out.

Woodward has been changing her staffs schedule to help her R.A.s. during finals week R.A.s wont have any desk duty, where they sort mail and help residents with problems that need immediate attention. All the R.A.s will be in the building by 8 p.m. every night during finals week.

“I understand that these are students too and I want them to be able to have some free time, but be able to get their duties done this week,” Woodward said.

She said she needs her residents out as soon as possible because on the May 22 they will be moving students in for several summer camps going on at the University of Kansas. Having all the repairs on the rooms will be a hard task for the maintenance crew the days after her residents are out.

It means a lot of stress on her part as well, since she has to be around to deal with the transition from spring to summer and that’s a big transition to occur in four days.

She said she has been encouraging her residents to turn in any maintenance requests as soon as they can so they can have things fixed and working when they move out. That will also give the maintenance department a place to start when they go into rooms.

Rebecca Deeds, Little River sophomore, is a resident assistant in Lewis Residence Hall. Even with the decreased desk duty her week will be extremely stressful since she has her own finals on top of worrying about her residents.

“I know they’re busy and I know that during this week I’m going to be a little short tempered and I don’t want to deal with them being lazy and waiting until the last minute to leave,” she said.

Packing up is a lot easier if residents plan and communicate with their roommates said Deeds. That means people living together should make sure everyone does some work to get their rooms cleaned up if one resident leaves without doing any work the others are just stuck with picking up.

Deeds said being organized is the key. Residents may not be able to pack up their computers yet, but they can do small things like take down their posters and do the dishes.

“So many residents just take off without saying anything and then their roommates get real mad at them, that’s no way to end several semesters living together,” she said.

Deeds said she has asked her residents to check out at the same time as their roommates, both to save time for her and them. If they check out together if Deeds finds anything that needs cleaned she can get them to clean it together.

If any of Deeds superiors check the room and it’s not to their standards Deeds will end up cleaning, so she has extra motivation to make sure her residents do a good job.

Deeds said the biggest problem will be if she finds anything wrong with the room that needs repaired. If she finds a hole in the wall and one of her residents put it there they will end up paying for it. She’s expecting to have some trouble with this since some rooms were damaged when residents moved in and if they didn’t put those damages on the paperwork they did when they moved in, they will get charged anyway.

“I’m expecting to have a lot of drama over this. The rooms aren’t always completely in perfect shape and if they don’t notice they things wrong they could end up being charged and paying a fee for something you didn’t do isn’t very fun,” Deeds said.

To help keep students from paying they can make sure they fill out maintenance requests as soon as they can. If the problem is fixed or scheduled to be fixed it’s easier to get around the fine Deeds said.

“I just hope my residents make it through finals week without breaking anything they’ll get charged for and I know they’ll be tempted,” she said.