Due to a medical accommodation, my roommate and I live in a Resident Assistant (RA) room, which has a bathroom, in Mathes Hall. One day, I walked into our bathroom and heard very light tapping noises. When I lifted my head to look for the noise, I was met with a hoard of gnats in and around the light fixture of the bathroom. The noises I had heard were from the gnats flying into the light fixture. Seeing a few gnats fly out of the bathroom and into the main room, I immediately exited the bathroom and closed the door behind me to prevent more from entering my room. The infestation must have happened in the last few hours because I had used the bathroom without a hitch earlier that day. 

I frantically called my roommate to fill her in on the situation and went to find my RA. The RA and RD for Mathes both came into my room to gauge the situation and were in shock from how bad the infestation was. They explained that they would put in a work order and that maintenance should come by to take care of the situation as soon as possible. In an attempt to do damage control, they sprayed the bathroom with a disinfectant spray and opened the window. However, the gnats were still there the next morning. 

Upon returning to my room later in the second day, I found that maintenance had come by while my roommate and I were away. They killed all of the gnats, but they didn’t clean them up. Our bathroom was full of dead gnats. The bugs were all over the floor and the toilet seat cover. The majority of the dead gnats were in the light fixture, so my roommate and I were hesitant to clean it up ourselves. Neither of us wanted to risk damaging anything while cleaning the bugs out of the fixture, as further damage could have resulted in possibly being fined by the school. 

Our RA put in another work order for maintenance to clean up the bugs, But, three days went by without any action. After another two work orders were placed, the bugs were still there, and our RA received an email saying that maintenance had ordered fly traps for our room. The email said that Amazon had initially delivered the wrong item and that maintenance should receive fly traps in the next two days. At this point, it had already been about a week and the dead bugs were still there. Five days later, our RA got an email saying that maintenance had installed a fly trap in our room, although no one found evidence of this being true. Not that the trap would have been much help at this point anyway. Eventually, our RA came into the room to clean out the gnats in our light fixture. We cleaned up the rest ourselves. To this day, we still have not received the fly traps that had supposedly been ordered.

I understand that maintenance gets a lot of work orders from all over campus, which can pile up very easily and make it hard to keep up with the workload. Despite this, the quality at which they complete their tasks matters. Sacrificing quality of work to achieve quantity of work orders completed will lead to more work orders being put in due to the shoddy work done for the sake of completion. This is a problem I hope Jewell will be able to address moving forward for the benefit of all students, faculty and staff.

“We started this club because we felt an absence of AAPI [Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander] representation on campus,” Quach said. “Although we are a small community on campus, we deserve to be recognized and to have a space where we can share our culture, history, celebrations and talk about – and bring awareness to – the issues the community is facing as a whole. This is our mission.”

The AAA is comprised of five presidential chairs: President of Recruitment Quach; President of Curriculum Nirbhay Vohra, a [year] [major]; President of Finance Rose Le, a [year] [major]; President of Communications Kamerin Hull a [year] [major]; and President of Human Resources Scotty Jolly, a [year] [major]. Moving forward each year, members of the AAA will vote in an election for the upcoming cabinet.

“This is our club’s first full semester, [and] because of this, our goal is to get as many people involved as possible,” Quach said. “We will have many fun events that aim to educate the Jewell community on the vast and rich AAPI cultures. In addition to this, we will have events around very serious problems facing the AAPI community to raise awareness and promote media literacy.” 

Their first event is set for Sept. 29 at 7pm on the 3rd floor of the PLC for the mid-autumn moon festival. Students who attend can enjoy mooncakes, tea and stickers while observing the supermoon that night.

The AAA is also planning for informative discussions and collaborations with other diversity organizations. Quach encourages all students to join AAA in celebrating the AAPI community regardless of race, ethnicity or culture.

“We want to make this abundantly clear to the Jewell community that you do not have to be AAPI to be a member of the club and to join us for any events,” Quach said. “This club is a place for the community to step out of their comfort zone and experience new foods, cultures, traditions, learn about those cultures and traditions and to participate in productive conversations.”

For more information on events and plans, follow @aaaatjewell on Instagram – with four a’s – or email any of the Cabinet members.