{"id":197257,"date":"2010-01-19T03:01:06","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T08:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanforddaily.com\/cgi-bin\/?p=1037207"},"modified":"2010-01-19T03:01:06","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T08:01:06","slug":"something-is-rotten-in-cubberley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/197257","title":{"rendered":"Something is Rotten in Cubberley"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Faculty,<\/p>\n

Faculty, administration and students who frequented Cubberley School of Education last quarter noted its unpleasant smell. The stench is currently under control after Zone Management investigated the problem and tried several different solutions. (ANNE PIPATHSOUK\/The Stanford Daily)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Odor in Cubberley fall quarter possibly due to leaking pipe, rodents<\/h3>\n

“It\u2019s not a bad smell,\u201d said Jess Fisher \u201913. \u201cIt is like the nostalgic musty smell you get when you walk into an old building.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the beginning of last quarter, the Cubberley School of Education was widely talked about among students due to the mysterious smell emanating from the building.<\/p>\n

Reports about the smell ranged from sewage to mustiness, and some students with fall quarter classes in Cubberley never smelled anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never really noticed a smell,\u201d said Shannon Wong \u201910, who had a morning class in Cubberley fall quarter.<\/p>\n

But the faculty and administration within the building were well aware of the odor. One administrator, who wished to remain anonymous, provided confirmation about the smell along with emphatic nodding and a slight chuckle.<\/p>\n

It was when students, staff and faculty began moving back into Cubberley after the construction project this past summer to retrofit it for earthquakes that the smell was first noticed.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight about the time that the project was completing…people started talking about a smell,\u201d explained Kathleen Baldwin, zone manager of section C of campus, which includes Cubberley.<\/p>\n

Up to nearly the end of fall quarter the smell was still a problem, but it appeared to be gradually dissipating.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to be getting better,\u201d explained Ona Andre, building manager for Cubberley. \u201cI believe it was stronger in the past [earlier in fall quarter] when it was called in.\u201d<\/p>\n

After enough complaints came in to confirm that the smell was not just noticed by the oversensitive, Zone Management was called in to investigate.<\/p>\n

Zone managers such as Baldwin oversee one of fours zones on campus, acting as the property managers of academic buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot so much the fire, but the floods and the locusts–we go out and help people [on campus],\u201d Baldwin said, explaining the involvement of the Zone Managers into the investigation at Cubberley.<\/p>\n

Baldwin, along with a team that includes pest control, electricians, technicians, plumbers, contractors for the Cubberley construction, the custodial company and Environmental Health and Safety, worked to comb the building top to bottom searching for the smell.<\/p>\n

Several ideas were investigated, ranging from checking the procedures of how the caf\u00e9 in Cubberley dealt with their garbage to ensuring that the drain heading down to the sewers was being kept wet. If the drain dries out it will result in a sewage-like smell.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t throw out any clue, you don\u2019t throw out any possibility of what it could be,\u201d explained Baldwin about their investigation techniques.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went from the top to the bottom and we found a couple of things that we thought could be suspect,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

During the summer the steam radiators for Cubberley were shut down; sometimes when they are turned back on they may leak or smell.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years we have had issues with fumes and that kind of thing,\u201d Andre said. \u201cMainly from radiators. [The smell] is fleeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Cubberley was investigated, a small leak was found in an old air-handling area of the fountain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found a small leak [in the air-handling unit] that we fixed, but basically we just went through the whole building and didn\u2019t see a whole lot of issues that could cause [the stench],\u201d Baldwin said.<\/p>\n

Another issue that possibly contributed to the smell was rodents in Cubberley. After looking around the mechanical rooms in Cubberley, some evidence of rodents was found. This issue was cleaned up and the mesh in the mechanical rooms was fixed to ensure that the rodents could not return.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we started solving these problems the smell has abated,\u201d Baldwin explained. \u201cSo right before we went on break I called Ona and asked how things were going over there and she said, \u2018You know, we haven\u2019t had many problems.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Baldwin believes that it was a series of small steps that resulted in the correction of the smell.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to me, I think it was more of the building starting to come back to 100 percent occupancy and usefulness and also some of the smaller leak areas that we found that helped,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

This quarter, there has been a sudden drop in complaints by faculty and students about the smell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t had any complaints from the faculty [winter quarter],\u201d Andre said.<\/p>\n

Students who are using Cubberley for the first time this quarter have not even been aware of the smell, except through rumors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have not smelled anything and I am very sensitive to smells,\u201d said Deanna Chase \u201913.<\/p>\n

Although students and administration this quarter have noticed the lack of smell within the building, the Zone manager investigation has not been closed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t done with Cubberley,\u201d Baldwin stated. \u201cIf somebody says today that they\u2019re smelling that smell again, we would go right back there and start the investigation again. We are very proactive about keeping our buildings safe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Faculty, administration and students who frequented Cubberley School of Education last quarter noted its unpleasant smell. The stench is currently under control after Zone Management investigated the problem and tried several different solutions. (ANNE PIPATHSOUK\/The Stanford Daily) Odor in Cubberley fall quarter possibly due to leaking pipe, rodents “It\u2019s not a bad smell,\u201d said Jess […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3459,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}