Yang added that he was informed by one of the campus officers that public safety was supposed to call maintenance before FDNY.
He also claimed that a fireman told him that all the elevators were out of use.
It is unknown why the classes were not cancelled right after this incident, and even before 9:20 a.m. the next day.
There were many events planned during the club hours and throughout the day on, but after it was announced that the classes were cancelled, representatives from clubs came to the Office of Student Life to cancel their events as well since they expected a smaller turnout.
“We had ordered food but were able to cancel in time. It did cause lots of confusion for our members,” said Shruti Tamrakar Tuladhar, the president of Himalayan Club, about their resume workshop that was supposed to take place on Tuesday.
Another email stating that all the club club activities and events are cancelled was sent at 10:34 a.m., only two hours before club hours.
This created a huge inconvenience for over 10 clubs that were holding general interest meetings and tabling events on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, other events on campus sponsored by Starr Career Development Center International Student Service Center were still taking place at that time.
The Undergraduate Student Government senate meeting that is held on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. was also cancelled, which was supposed to hold elections for the new representative senators.
The representative senator positions got the largest number of applications, 28, in recent years, and due to the flood, the elections were pushed back to this week.
This unexpected situation revealed the lack of communication on campus. Some students
were told that the building was being shut down, and the access to the club suite was blocked immediately after the email announcing the cancellation of club activities.
However, the email did not say that the club suite was also being closed, while the rest of the building was still open.
OSL stated that public security did not want students to be in the building, and there was a possibility that the whole building can be shut down.
The public safety officials also said that shutting down the whole building was possible, but they were not ordered to do so.
The building was not shut down, instead, security guards in both entrances were announcing that the classes in the NVC were canceled with megaphones.
There was another email sent by the Dean of Student Announcements later in the day saying, “The bank of six central elevators in the Newman Vertical Campus will be offline through this week. A flood damaged part of the electrical wiring that services these elevators, and contractors for The City University of New York will be working through the weekend to repair and test the system.”
As stated, a flood had damaged part of the electrical wiring that services the elevators, yet the email did not disclose the reasoning for the flood.
A final email sent to students announced on Friday that four out of six elevators were fixed by Thursday afternoon.
“Following an inspection, four cars were put back into service. The remaining two cars are being
tested before being released for use.”
