Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 8, 1993 TAG: 9305080072
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Last year it was a room that had been painted completely black, recalled Pam Winfrey, director of housing operations at Tech.
No way Winfrey was going to put parents, in town for graduation, in that one.
This year (so far, anyway), it was a room on Ambler Johnston's seventh floor, said Margie Lawrence, housekeeping manager.
The loft hadn't been taken down, the blue rug, complete with muddy footprints, remained on the floor. And on the walls, along with the paint, splats of tobacco juice.
Four garbage bags later, the room was still a mess, said Espen Spangenburg, a resident adviser in the building.
"He left that room exactly how he lived in it," Spangenburg said, shaking his head. "We're talking about just locking the door."
Lawrence had estimated a good four hours of cleaning time to give the room the polish it needed. And the work crew had just 24 hours to fix up dorm rooms for 1,814 guests - not including rooms for members of the baseball team from South Florida, who couldn't find hotel rooms anywhere close to the Tech diamond.
Tech started housing parents in dormitories four years ago, after Tech and Radford University had held their graduations on the same day. Parents were staying in hotels hours away, Winfrey said. There wasn't room in the New River Valley for everybody.
Even when the schools held graduations on separate days (as they have vowed to do forevermore) parents still had to stay far from their offspring come commencement time.
So in 1990, when there was one day between the end of finals and the day parents would need to check in for graduation, the housekeeping staff went to work.
It is something of a logistical nightmare to get all of the students and a year's worth of dirt out of the dorm rooms in 24 hours.
Cathy Carpenter, a graduate assistant and resident manager of Main Campbell Hall, wrote memos telling the students when they would have to leave. But by noon on Thursday, they were still in the rooms, still finishing last-minute papers.
It wasn't until they were out that the real cleaning could begin.
"We mop, wipe things down, get maintenance to try to fix things," Carpenter said. "Even if the students clean it we clean it again."
Which might be a good idea.
"I find `clean' is a very subjective term," Winfrey said.
Carpenter also made out the room assignments, trying to find the rooms without bunk beds, trying to put a 1940 Tech graduate back into his old dormitory.
On Thursday afternoon, the hallways were filled with discarded posters, carpets, clothing, one 5-foot tree branch and bags with more soda cans than one person should consume in a month, much less a weekend.
The staff swept, mopped and carried, and put sheets at the foot of more than 1,800 beds.
By the time the parents were scheduled to arrive, at 1 p.m. Friday, the staff promised, there would be no more gum wrappers or Skoal cans. The mounds of garbage in front of the dormitories would be gone, too.
Amid all of the pressure, there were smiles.
"We enjoy doing it," Winfrey said. "[Thursday night] probably no one on the staff will think it's a good idea. But by graduation, the mood changes. We give the students their first look at campus when they come for orientation, and we celebrate with them as they're leaving. It kind of brings things full circle."
The staff walked through an emptying campus with walkie-talkies, monitoring the hallways as the students left.
"As a whole, the boys are a whole lot messier than some of the girls," Lawrence said. "Though there are girls that can give them a lot of competition."
Junior Greever, a housekeeping supervisor, and Charles Hall, a lead worker, dubbed West Ambler Johnston the worst of the places that would house parents.
But they said Cochrane swept the "worst overall" category.
"It's the dirtiest," Greever said. "Nasty. Gross."
by CNB