Life at Blue Ridge Assembly
Ada Lambert | February 2, 2023
On Jan. 6 — two weeks before returning from winter break — Warren Wilson College (WWC) residents living in Villages A and B received shocking news; their apartments had been flooded.
Christmas morning, Tacci Smith, dean of students, was contacted about the flood caused by the freeze. At first, the extent of the damage was unknown, only that a pipe had burst in Villages A.
The air was so cold that the water had turned to ice as it seeped under the door, freezing it shut. Public Safety was unable to enter the building until the ice thawed the day after. When they finally were able to inspect the buildings, they realized that the damage was beyond a two-week fix.
With Villages A experiencing issues, Public Safety was keeping a close eye on Villages B. Within a day, Villages B started having complications, but this time they were able to stop it from worsening.
“By then we definitely knew that both buildings were going to be offline,” Smith said. “We knew that Villages A fire panel was damaged, which is a different wiring system. The fire marshall will have to do inspections and all that kind of stuff. Villages B wasn’t going to take as long because it was only the sprinklers and water damage.”
After learning about the extent of the damage, Smith and her fellow administrators were tasked with rehousing 77 students before the return from winter break. They were able to find additional housing at Blue Ridge Assembly, a conference center that WWC utilized for quarantine space last year.
Smith and Sandra Hall, director of housing and residence life, handled separate parts of the process. While Smith was dealing with the students being relocated to Blue Ridge Assembly, Hall was working with the minimal spaces left in housing for the students who preferred to stay on campus.
“The hotels weren't really coming through to have enough space, but then Blue Ridge did,” Smith said. “They had a couple of different building options up there and, simultaneously, Hall was taking the list of the 77 residents and starting to categorize them.”
The process of prioritization for on-campus housing was based on multiple factors: students with Emotional Support Animals (ESA), students who did not own a car, students who had work crews with early shifts and students willing to live in a double room even if they previously had a single room.
“As they were moving in on the weekend, that Sunday and Monday, there were still some spots available on campus, very few and far between, but a couple of those folks decided as they were coming to check in and get their key for Blue Ridge, like ‘are there any spaces on campus?’,” Smith said. “And we were like ‘yeah, here.’ So they took that offer.”
For some students, the transition to living off-campus has been overwhelming, especially for those who have been living on campus for years. Laila Smith, a senior, was taken aback by the news, due to her being in her last semester at WWC.
“I've been here all four years, so I have my own schedules and things that I'm used to,” Laila Smith said. “I don’t have a car, so now if I want to go to the gym, I have to catch a ride. If I want to go to Gladfelter at the moment, because I'm hungry, it is twenty minutes away. On Fridays, I have a class at 2:30 so it's either find a ride or skip the class.”
Even for non-seniors, moving to Blue Ridge has brought a lot of challenges to their day-to-day routines. Gwyn Atkinson, a junior, has had time to settle into her space, but there are parts of the adjustment that are still difficult.
“Now that I'm in there, I'm enjoying it, and it's really just the gas money that sucks,” Atkinson said. “But the transition itself…that was so stressful and it really just felt like having the rug pulled out from under us. We had a day and a half to get everything out of the apartment, and that was just like the worst possible way to start the semester.”
The cabinet has yet to comment on complaints about gas money and refunds for people living in doubles who paid for singles, but Smith made it clear that the intention is to move most people back to campus when Village B is back in service. The current trajectory for that is March 1, but that date is only a loose prediction as of now while damages are still being assessed.
“If we can house all the [Village] A folks and people who want to come back in and create some singles or some spaces, then by all means, we'll do that, but we can't promise because I can't even look at stuff right now and 100% anticipate everything,” Smith said. “We're having to comb through and really pick things out. It's just kind of a waiting game, unfortunately.”
Despite frustrations and concerns, students are trying to acclimate the best they can. Atkinson has made an effort to remind herself that this situation is hard for everyone involved and that it is important to have patience with faculty at this time.
“I'm trying to not push the narrative that I've been wronged in this situation because this is out of everybody's control,” Atkinson said. “I think that I've heard a lot of people express feeling wronged, and I understand that there's a lot of hurt around this scenario, but at the same time, I just want to be aware that no one could have foreseen this and everyone's doing the best they can.”