Students at St Anne’s are seeking compensation from the College after they went two weeks without hot water.
The College has blamed the problem on extensive issues with the plumbing, but some students have criticised what they described as a ‘complacent attitude’ of the College when it came to rectifying the situation.
The problem was first drawn to the Maintenance team when students returning from the vac were unable to run hot water in the Wolfson Block.
What was initially thought to be a simple fault ended up requiring a new pump, specialists and two weeks worth of work.
St Anne’s JCR President, Owen Evans, met with the Bursar on Wednesday to discuss potential compensation.
He commented, “We had a very open and balanced discussion on the matter, as we sought to represent the views of the affected students. We’re currently awaiting a reply from college, as they go through their figures and assess the situation.”
The first complaint was received on Monday of 0th week, but it was not until Monday of this week that the students were finally able to shower in their accommodation.
The prolonged repairs have sparked criticisms from students that the College showed a lack of urgency when dealing with the issue. Martin Jackson, bursar for St Anne’s, hit back at these claims saying, “The speed of response would not have been any different whether the residents were Fellows, students or conference delegates.”
Jackson stated that after the tank was cleaned, specialists who had been called in, doubted whether the pump was ‘man’ enough to circulate the hot water. This has lead to a new pump being installed at a cost of £850.
Eleanor Taylor, who lives in the affected block said,”The lack of hot water has been a huge inconvenience to all the residents of our building and initially we were left entirely in the dark about what the problem was.”
She went to say that this could have had very serious consequences for the students. “College is quite frankly very lucky that no one came down with any serious diseases, given that we were unable to wash up with hot water for over 10 days.”
Ben West, who was angered that it had taken so long for the college to react, said, “If students at Oxford are going to be expected to fork out ever increasing sums of money for the privilege of being here, we should be able to expect more than the complacent attitude towards students that we’ve seen in this particular episode.”
