Catherine Twing photo
A sign on a dorm's main door announces suite inspections. School ofificials say the inspections are aimed at cleanliness and maintenance, and students say they don't mind.
 

A bright orange sign stating “Notification, Monthly Suite Inspection” greeted the students on the door of Morrill Hall last Friday as they entered their dorm.

 The sign continued: “This building will be having their monthly health and safety inspection of their suite area and bathroom this Friday between 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.”

This raised red flags and questions for many students, as they didn’t know what to expect from this new process.

“Are they checking our rooms? What exactly are they looking for?” said Katelyn Tomaselli, a junior athletic training major and resident of Morrill Hall.

Shaun Williams a long-time member of the Castleton community and Area Coordinator for many of the residence halls for more than five years, explained that the inspections aren’t punitive. He spoke about the effort and how it is meant to simply improve dorm life.

“I can’t get enough of Castleton,” he said, explaining that his love of the place fostered the idea to make sure living quarters are kept relatively neat. It was one of his first moves as newly appointed assistant director of Residence Life.  

After obtaining his new position, Williams and Director of Residence Life, Michael Robilotto sat down together over the summer to come up with new ways to make improvements around campus this year.

The main goal of these inspections are to keep up with work orders, stay on top of damages, and to make sure suites are staying clean.

“They are done on a monthly basis to deal with damages sooner rather than later, resulting in saving students money at the end of the year,” Robilotto said.

A typical suite inspection would involve the main suite area and bathrooms, to check for cleanliness and make sure they don’t get out of hand. Inspections are limited to those areas because “rooms are students personal space, not an area we want to go into,” Williams said.

Although this may seem like an unnecessary process considering all dorm rooms and suites already go through an inspection before every break, many students have taken a liking to this new process.

“It’s a good concept to keep damages from going unnoticed, and help residents communicate ideas or concerns with residence life,” said Jennifer McGuoirk a community adviser in Morrill Hall.

Williams is also excited about this for the same reason.

“It is a great opportunity to have positive interactions between Residence Life and students” he said.

The process of the inspections was carefully created to make students feel like they are being helped, not like they are getting in trouble or looked down upon, to “create more of a community feel,” Robilotto said.

And that’s why Williams is the one doing the inspections, they said. Williams is a familiar face around campus, and someone most students won’t have issues with when he comes to inspect and will feel comfortable communicating concerns they may have, they said.

Caption