Annex Resident Encounters Elevator Nightmare in Dorm

Club Annex Elevator may be the newest hotspot on campus. Free for girls all night and  free for boys with IDs until 2 a.m.
Morgan Winbush, a freshman print journalism major, had no clue that she would actually spend part of her Friday night there.

On her way to a friend’s room on the fifth floor of the Annex’s west side, Winbush found herself trapped in the elevator.

“I thought the elevator was moving but it wasn’t,” Winbush said.
Winbush, A third floor resident, had not seen a flyer posted on the first floor warning students not to use the right hand elevator.

Once Winbush realized the elevator was not moving, she called friends who instructed her to hold down the emergency button until the fire department arrived.

“No one could actually hear the alarm. Only my friends could hear it because they were on the third floor with me,” she said.
Stuck inside for 40 minutes until the fire department arrived to free her, Winbush decided to entertain herself.

“I had my laptop so I was on Facebook,” she said.

Perhaps while she was perusing the site, she could have stumbled across a group created for her particular predicament: “Annex Elevators…Convenient Devices or Death in a Box,” which was created by Annex residents and currently has 18 members. The group is dedicated particularly to the west side elevators. Currently, only one of the two is working.
The group description comically details residents’ reasons for joining, from opting to take the stairs for fear of being stuck alone, to having friends refuse to visit west-siders altogether.

“I’m definitely going to join the group,” Winbush said, but her main concern is getting the elevators working properly.

“I just think we need to have it fixed because we all rely on one elevator,” she said.

At times, both elevators have gone out and students have been forced to take the stairs, she added.

While the exercise may seem beneficial, Winbush points out that the elevators were down during parts of move-in time and some of her friends had to walk their belongings to the sixth and seventh floors.

Tomantha Kyle’s pointed out that poor elevator service leaves the disabled with no options.

“What if I had just broke my ankle,” asked Kyle, a freshman actuarial science major and sixth floor west Annex resident.
There are no alternatives in the Annex for a physically impaired resident to make their way up the stairs.

Kyle said the frequent repairs on the elevators have yielded few results.

“I’ve witnessed them being fixed at least 10 times and they still don’t work,” Kyle said. “I know the elevator man by name.”
Kyle believes that students should show their concerns, speak to their community director and start a petition.

Shameka Ealy, a freshman business management major and Annex president, is responsible for relaying problems residents have to higher authorities.

“I’ve talked to Dean [Charles] Gibbs about the elevators. He knows the concerns and he’s handling it wonderfully,” Ealy said.

Gibbs, Dean of Residence Life, was unavailable for comment.
Ealy said she has never been stuck in the elevator and would be scared if it happened, but explained that since the Annex has two elevators on each wing, problems with them receive lesser priority than those of dormitories with fewer elevators.

“The Annex is the newest ,so we don’t get things fixed as quickly as other dorms,” Ealy said.