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The Rice Thresher
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by Matt Cuddihy thresher staff Two students were warned that they may be fined for elevator repair costs after they were stuck in an elevator for about two hours Saturday night. Food and Housing Business Manager Frank Rodriguez said students who cause an elevator to stall by jumping may face fines to cover the $500 repair cost. This decision follows the frequent stalling of elevators at Brown and Sid Richardson Colleges, including two incidents in the left Sid elevator in the past two weeks. Rodriguez emphasized that each case will be evaluated individually, and if it is decided that the students were not jumping or were not otherwise responsible for the elevator's malfunction, they will not be fined. Elevator repairmen are paid $120 per hour, Rodriguez said, and it costs about $500 to have repairmen reset the elevator. On Saturday, Sid seniors Kyle Voosen and Rajiv Bala entered the elevator from the ground floor at about 9:45 p.m. They pushed the sixth-floor button and began moving upward. Shortly thereafter, the elevator stopped and the control panel lights went out. When they realized that they were stuck, they pressed the "emergency" button on the panel to call for assistance. Eventually, a repairman arrived and talked with them down through the elevator shaft. According to Bala and Voosen, the repairman twice went up to the roof to reset the elevator but failed to get it working. After about 30 minutes, Bala and Voosen called for help again and this time were told that a different elevator repairman was on his way. This second repairman succeeded in resetting the elevator. After taking a few rides up and down in the elevator without getting the doors to open, Bala and Voosen were finally let out on the seventh floor. When Bala and Voosen exited the elevator, the technician asked them if they had been jumping in the elevator. Bala said he had been bobbing slightly, but not jumping, and that Voosen hadn't been moving at all. Two days later, Bala and Voosen received an e-mail from Rodriguez stating, "Please be aware that Food and Housing is issuing fines for [jumping in the elevator]. The cost of getting an elevator technician out to Rice to reset the elevator is usually around $500. Let me know if you have any questions." Bala and Voosen both said they were very upset over the possibility of paying such a fine. "I couldn't believe it - it didn't make any sense to me that I should be charged for being stuck in an elevator for two hours," Bala said. Voosen wrote a response letter to Rodriguez in which he said he and Bala were not jumping or walking around in the elevator. "Hearing people stuck in [the Sid elevators] seems to have become a part of daily life at Sid now, and you can't keep charging students hundreds of dollars for riding in an elevator when it decides to break," the letter stated. Rodriguez said he was not charging Bala and Voosen but trying to make them aware of the cost. Rodriguez said he sent out his e-mail based on the information he had received from the elevator technician, who reported that Voosen and Bala had been jumping and thus caused the elevator to stop. He said he suggested to F&H Director Mark Ditman a fine of $100 to show students that jumping in the elevators will not be tolerated. Rodriguez said he is now investigating the incident in order to determine the proper course of action. In the future, Rodriguez said, there will be fines for causing elevators to get stuck due to jumping or other types of horseplay. He equated this activity to a form of vandalism. "We can't be having this sort of thing," he said. "I don't want to end up subsidizing people's vandalism." The elevators at Sid were revamped earlier this summer in a $220,000 modernization project. Mechanical Repairs Supervisor Ronnie Cox said the new elevators incorporate more safety features and that the safety equipment is much more sensitive than in the old elevators. Jumping in the elevators can trigger these sensors and cause the elevator to stop, Cox said. "A lot of [elevator] cable is involved here," Cox said, noting that Sid is as tall as a 14-story building. "If there is jumping occurring in the car, this causes the cable to stretch, and it also causes slack which the elevator reads as a problem with the governor." A governor is a safety device that shuts down the elevator if the momentum produced is unsafe. Cox said Facilities and Engineering has and will continue to make adjustments in the elevator sensors to make them less sensitive. He and other workers have tried to make the elevator stop by duplicating what students might do, and they determined that it would take "a pretty vigorous jumping" to stall the elevator. Cox also said there is a computer that records data, including error codes, from the elevator when it gets stuck so that technicians can determine the cause. The last elevator malfunction at Sid was Sept. 30, when five students were trapped inside for about an hour.
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