Written By Quintessa Williams
Students at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC organized a protest outside the university president’s office Monday afternoon after reportedly experiencing heat and hot water outages for the past two weeks.
In a Tiktok post, Shaw University student Karlissa Jameson stated that the Fleming Kee Men’s Living and Learning Center lost electricity, hot water, and heat. The students were reportedly moved across from the dorm to the Dimple Newsome Dorm, where she stated they also experienced ‘poor living conditions’ and more outages.
“I just want to make it clear that I am not trying to bash my university at all, but we do need to make this aware, especially within our boys dorm,” Jameson said.
“It’s cold. Everything is just freezing. People are showering by warming up hot water in water bottles,” Michael, a Shaw University student living at Dimple Newsome told ABC11. “It’s just treacherous right now.”
Officials at Shaw said they’ve had ongoing issues with the heat at Dimple Newsome.
“Maintenance professionals were working to fix the problem during winter break while students were away from campus. In early January, the matter was resolved for several days, but the recent cold snap caused the issue with the boiler system to return,” Shaw University’s Interim Director of Communications and Marketing John McCann said.
Students marched to Estey Hall on Monday to demand answers about the lack of heat and hot water. They met with university administrators about their concerns. Both staffers and students said the meeting was productive, but there is still no clear answer on when the repairs will be completed.
“It’s a start because change — it doesn’t happen in one day — but we have to start progress someday, and I mean, that day was today. That’s progress,” Feaster said.
Late Monday night, Shaw said the heat was finally working and the “water temperature is rising” in Dimple Newsome dorm. However, Jameson says the university is still experiencing outages at this time.
The reported outages comes days after North Carolina A&T State University also experienced heat outages in Greensboro. At least 34 buildings across the campus were were impacted from the outage.
