The water in Founders was shut off for several hours last month when a sewage issue was discovered. After the incident was resolved, Amy Buck, the Facilities operations manager, sent a campus-wide email describing a few surprising sewage-related concerns.
“It has come to our attention,” she said, “that there is a significant volume of trash being flushed in the toilets across campus.” If students continue flushing trash, it could “result in a fine levied against the college from the city.”
The email included a list of non-flushable items, such as dental floss, glass and diapers. Many students were shocked to hear that such items were being flushed in the toilets.
“I think that’s kind of wild,” said freshman Olivia Canada. “I feel like it’s kind of like common sense not to flush glass down the toilet. I don’t know why people would be doing that.”
Tamara Sanchez, a sophomore, was similarly astonished.
“I don’t know why people would want to trash our toilets,” said Sanchez. “I don’t think that’s helpful for our school or for the environment.”
The recent sewage issue in Founders is not the only issue Covenant has faced. A waterline burst in the library last fall and resulted in some of the catalog getting wet and a long process of repair.
There are also stories of toilets in Brethren, a hall in Founders, overflowing in the middle of the night and spewing out trash.
“I heard about them overflowing all the time,” said Isaac Leicht, sophomore and former Brethren resident. Surprisingly, he said he doesn’t know anyone on Brethren who flushes anything but toilet paper in the toilets.
However, in an interview, the Facilities Services supervisor, Crystal Brannon, confirmed that trash is being discovered in the sewage.
“You think,” she said, “someone’s in the bathroom and they’ve got a bottle of perfume, and they drop it on the floor and they’re trying to pick it up and throw it away and they’re closest to the toilet. They might just toss it in there and think it’s going to flush down.”
It’s not always glass that is flushed, but simple things like hair can cause issues as well.
If girls clean out their brush and throw the hair in the toilet, Brannon said, “what it does is it goes in there and it just binds stuff together because hair is really strong.” The clumping of things like toilet paper and feces “clogs up the toilet.”
She explained that some products students may think are flushable are not and disrupt the sewage system.
“Flushable wipes are supposed to be biodegradable,” Brannon said, “but they’re usually not. They don’t degrade quickly enough for the amount of toilets that we have in Founders.” The “muffin monster,” a playful name the Facilities team gave to their decomposing machine, “has a hard time eating the waste when people throw things in there that don’t degrade quickly enough.”
When asked, some students gave a few suggestions for stopping others from flushing trash in the toilets—such as bringing awareness to the problem and explaining what can and cannot be flushed.
“A chapel talk by Chaplain Lowe,” said Sanchez, “just to draw attention and making sure that people can see the damage that’s done and how much it costs to fix it.”
Robert Owen, a senior and former Facilities worker, said the RAs should make their students more aware of what they can’t flush in the toilet. Owen said that another issue Facilities has is a low number of workers.
“I think the main consistent need that Facilities has is more people,” said Owen. “There were a few jobs we did that were a lot harder, that if we just had like one or two more people it wouldn’t have been near as difficult.”
Brannon confirmed this concern. This comes after Facilities increased their hourly pay last semester to hopefully incentivize students to apply.
The number of Facilities workers was at a critically low number last year, she said. This made it challenging to “keep the campus sanitized, clean and promote a good environment for the students to learn in.”
Brannon said that the Facilities team’s priority is keeping this campus clean and safe for its students. This is why the college quickly moved for a pay raise to help Facilities fulfill its purpose.
“Cleanliness is the best defense for any kind of disease,” she said. “And when we don’t have enough students to do the job it causes a lot of issues for us, the students and staff alike.”