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CEDAR CITY -- Hundreds of Southern Utah University students are being forced to evacuate their dorm rooms. And they have only one week to find a new place to live.
227 students live in SUU's Juniper Hall dorm rooms, and they're evacuating the building because of a malfunction in the buildings heating system.
"I'm extremely stressed right now. Don't know what to do," said resident Christina Gaddis.
For students like Gaddis, moving out of her dorm room is coming at an extremely inconvenient time.
"Considering I have three exams this week, I'm not happy. I wish they would've given us more time. They had to have known about it for a while," she said.
ButUniversity officials say it was just Thursday when a drop in water pressure and leaking pipes alerted them that something was wrong with the 50 year old building. The piping is buried in concrete floors which makes it virtually impossible to assess the damage.
So, the university called in the experts and by Saturday determined that "The heating system has been compromised," according to Dean O'Driscoll. "It will not hold pressure to run a heating system. Especially when the temperatures start to drop. So we need to make a move right now while it's beautiful and warm, instead of come to them when it leaks again and it's 15 degrees and 6 inches of snow."
By Sunday, the university sent letters to parents expressing concerns with the heating system and its ability to keep the dorm rooms warm this coming winter. Officials gathered students and gave them four options: Two people will now bunk in a room design for one person or three people will now bunk in a room designed for two people
Which for Christina Gaddis means things will be a little overcrowded.
"So they'll give you a bed to put in somebody else's room. They won't even give you a desk or a dresser. Just a bed to sleep on," she said.
The third option is that the university will place students in a home in the community. O'Driscoll says he's confident every student being forced to leave Juniper Hall will have a place to live by the end of the week.
"There are rooms in this community. We just have to find out which landlords, which places are willing to make the best deal for us," O'Driscoll said. Christine Gaddis is taking the fourth option, which is to sign a release form, get out of her housing contract without penalty, and find her own housing.
"I've been up all night looking for places to live. And things are filling up pretty fast."
As for Juniper Hall, things are up in the air right now becausethe university says it has no money to renovate the building. Meanwhile, on its website, the university requests individuals who have a place for these displaced students to live to complete a form online.
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