On the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 5:48 a.m., University students received an emergency safety email from the administration informing them of an unexpected building closure due to a gas main repair.
41 Park Row, known to many students as the University’s arts building, cleared its halls following recommendations from the New York Fire Department (NYFD). The University’s administration took action to maintain student and faculty safety until repairs were completed.
Following the closure, Brian Anderson, the Associate Vice President for Safety and Emergency Management and Director of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) at the University, announced in an email addressed to students and faculty that all classes scheduled to take place in the building would shift to a remote format. He also added that any faculty or staff based in 41 Park Row would transition to remote working.
Over the course of the closure, several more emails and text messages made their way to Pace Communities, keeping residents updated on repair progress. 41 Park Row continued to be closed over four days.
On Feb. 27 at 5:20 p.m., community members received an email in which the University administration expressed appreciation to students and staff for their patience throughout the closures. The school administration also acknowledged that repairs were taking longer than expected but added that they were hopeful that 41 Park Row would be able to reopen on Monday, March 3.
24 hours later, the administration sent out another email, announcing repairs on the gas main outside 41 Park Row had been completed and that the FDNY had cleared the building for safe occupancy. 41 Park Row was fully open and operational on March 1, two days before the estimated reopening.
Students affected by the building closure voiced feelings of frustration and anxiety around the delays. Savannah Griffin, a sophomore Communication and Media Studies major, talked about her struggle to complete a major assignment due to the building closure. Griffin attends a Podcasting and Audio Storytelling class on Thursdays inside 41 Park Row. Her class had been assigned a project to create, record and edit a 10-minute podcast episode on a topic of their choice.
“That exact morning [Feb. 25], I had requested time to go to the podcasting studio so I could start recording my podcast,” Griffin said. After receiving a text message alert of the 41 Park Row closure, Griffin said she “realized that it was not happening. The podcast was due literally 3 days later, and so I had to email my professor.” Griffin’s professor extended the due date to Tuesday, March 4.
When asked how she felt the university handled the incident, Griffin said she believed “[The administration] communicated to the best of their ability” and that “It’s not [the] University’s fault or my professor’s fault that the gas incident happened.”
