The Pennington Student Activity Center (SAC) was damaged Monday, Sept. 6. According to the staff and campus police, a student or group of students snuck in a football and proceeded to play on the basketball courts. The ball was aimed too high and hit the sprinkler system, breaking it completely.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever know what exactly happened but from what we understand someone must have brought a football in, hidden in their bag or something. So they were throwing the football and really just hit the sprinkler head perfectly,” said Dolly Hebert-Crouch, director of the SAC.
After the pipe was hit, water began spewing out onto the underside of the track and all over the basketball courts. Water gushed at 150 pounds of water per second. It took almost 20 minutes for the pipes to be turned off. The gym had to be completely evacuated.
The university police department has issued a full investigation to find out who caused the damages.
“UPD is finishing up their investigation on it. And once they are finished they will give us that information and we have a policy that if there’s any destruction to the property, those people are banned from the facility. If I’m not mistaken, if they haven’t found him already, they pretty much know who it is,” said Hebert-Crouch
Unfortunately due to recent budget cuts, the university and staff at the SAC are unsure exactly how the repairs will be paid.
“The company that’s coming in has saved us a bunch of money. They have dried up the floor so much. What could have really been a number of bulks and peaks in a floor has turned out to just be a couple. So they’re actually going to end up saving us a lot of money. And that’s definitely appreciated,” said Hebert-Crouch.
The SAC staff should also be thanked for the amount of money being saved and for the cleanup process.
“I am really proud of the student staff that was working that night that came in later in the evening because every one of them picked up a broom or a dust mop and mopped those floors dry they best they could. Some of the students didn’t have to stay but they did. So really the students at Southeastern should really be grateful because they actually saved us a lot of money as well by staying and cleaning,” said Hebert-Crouch.
While all feels relief, there are still a lot of hurt feelings among the SAC staff.
“I guess for me I still haven’t gotten an apology. They have not approached the director of the facility and they don’t even really need to apologize to me. They really need to apologize to the students who have been directly impacted by not being able to use the space. There’s been no effort, no effort by any of the party involved,” said Hebert-Crouch.
As far as when the entire courts will reopen, no one is sure. Two of the courts should open within the next couple of weeks but the full court reopening is unknown.
Corrections:
In the Sept. 21 issue, in the “Pennington basketball courts damaged” article that ran on page one, there is a misspelled name. The correct spelling is Dollie Hebert-Crouch.