“[The parent] was genuinely distraught,” Brzoska said. “She was like, ‘She’s been sick every single time she's come home, and then she gets better, and then she goes back to school and she’s sick again.’”

Brzoska said that the student could see mold in her room and called maintenance to remove the mold, but finally attempted to kill the fungus herself.?

“This is not the first time I’ve heard of a service request about mold get ignored,” Brzoska said.

The experience reflects a broader pattern that The Lantern found in campus maintenance records.

A Lantern investigation into nearly a decade of Ohio State campus maintenance service requests, totaling over 241,000 requests and encompassing each dorm on campus, reveals a system under persistent strain.?

Some examples stand out.

Doors, windows and locks is the single largest problem category, accumulating nearly 41,000 requests alone.?

Elevator repairs take over two months to complete on average — the slowest of any category.?

Some dorms, such as Morrison Tower and Siebert Hall, wait more than 14 days on average for any request to be completed.?

Older buildings tend to generate more maintenance demand relative to their size, though age alone does not explain the pattern.?

And mold — one of the most common complaints students reported to The Lantern — is not tracked as its own category in Ohio State's maintenance system at all.

The Lantern decided to pursue this analysis following several high-profile dorm closures, specifically Taylor and Lawrence Tower.

In addition, a survey of about 300 students commonly reported issues like mold and plumbing. The respondents said it usually took more than five days to fix the issue and that it would typically return.

Dave Isaacs and Dan Hedman, two university spokespeople, wrote in a statement about what goes into dorm maintenance, Ohio State’s Facilities Condition Index, facilities’ budget, aging dorms, renovations, and explaining specific findings about Morrill and Lincoln Towers and Neil Building.

“Maintaining residence halls is a complex, year-round operation that includes Facilities (maintenance and custodial), Planning, Projects and Space Management, and Housing and Residence Education (HRE),” Isaacs said.

Lindsay Wagner, vice president of strategic communications for APPA, a consulting firm that works with universities over their dorm planning and maintenance, said problems like these are common among universities.

Ohio State has an institutional membership with APPA and assessments are conducted by university staff, Isaacs said.

Isaacs said APPA helps Ohio State create guidelines for maintenance and custodial operational staffing for educational facilities, establish an industry standard for cleaning times, task list, and inspections, teach ongoing education and best practices and professional development.

Taylor Tower closed in January because of a major pipe rupture. Over 700 students were forced out of the north campus dormitory.?

The university decided to close the dorm for the rest of the semester to repair the extensive plumbing and elevator damage caused by the pipe failure.

A little over a year earlier, residents of Lawrence Tower found fully formed mushrooms growing out of the dorm walls, prompting the temporary relocation of 40 students from 19 rooms.

Initially, Ohio State said the fungal growth was caused by a water leak, resulting in drywall damage. However, the university asked the 500 residents to find more permanent alternative accommodations to minimize disruptions during renovations.

Alternatively, the group of parents hired PriorityLab, which found in an independent mold report that 27 of the 28 rooms in Lawrence showed significant mold growth.

A group of students and parents affected by mold exposure in Lawrence filed a joint lawsuit against Ohio State, alleging that the university was aware of the problem.

The Lantern does not know the current status of the lawsuit. Jedidiah Bressman, the attorney representing most of the students, did not respond in time for publication.

Mold and plumbing are not the only issues commonly found at Ohio State dorms.

Through a public records request, The Lantern obtained and built upon a dataset of all facility service requests submitted to Ohio State’s Facilities Operations and Development across all campus buildings.?

Isaacs said Ohio State does not classify maintenance due to user errors or regular effects of aging dorms. Instead, the university tracks reactionary service requests, and preventative and corrective work orders.

Isaacs said Student Life completed 36,000 planned work orders with about double that number in labor hours, with specific tasks dependent on the building infrastructure and building systems within the facility.

Each entry included the date and time a request was submitted, when the request was complete, the building and room where the problem was reported and the specific problem reported.

The requests were grouped into 14 problem categories, including the year the dorm was built and the number of beds it holds, to provide a more accurate comparison.

Across all residence halls, doors, windows and locks received the most submissions, accumulating nearly 41,000 complaints.?

Appliances and laundry ranked second with 36,700, and plumbing followed not far behind.

Together, these three categories account for roughly half of all service requests filed during this time period.

Morrill Tower, the largest residence hall on campus with 1,400 beds, actually falls below the average when adjusted for size, suggesting it is comparatively well-maintained despite its age.

In comparison, Lincoln Tower only houses around 600 students, but is well above the trend line, suggesting that it generates far more requests than its size would predict.

Isaacs said Lincoln and Morrill have very different types of occupants.

“Morrill accommodates more student beds, while Lincoln has a higher percentage of office space,” Isaacs said.

Lantern findings also show wide variation in how quickly problems get resolved.?

Among the 15 dorms that take the longest to repair, the average time to complete the request is about 11 to 15 days, and Morrison Tower leads in that category.

Elevator repairs take longer to resolve than any other maintenance category at OSU residence halls, averaging nearly 1,800 hours — or about 75 days — from submission to completion. Fire and safety alarms, furniture and beds, and building structure repairs follow. Plumbing, despite generating the third-most requests of any category, ranks among the fastest to resolve.

On average, elevator repairs take over two months to complete, which Isaacs did not provide an explanation for. Plumbing, despite its high number of requests, is among the fastest to resolve.

The data also shows a pattern: older buildings tend to generate more maintenance requests relative to their size.?

But age isn't the only factor.?

Neil Building was built in 2003, and Scott House in 2015, but they both rank among the highest for requests per bed, suggesting other factors are in play.

Isaacs said the Neil Building contains the Marketplace on Neil and Sweet Streets, which are dining halls.

“Requests from those Dining Services locations are included in the total for the building but are not in any way related to student rooms,” Isaacs said.

To get a better sense of how Ohio State students feel, The Lantern took to Instagram to ask questions about their experiences living on campus.

Respondents self-selected by answering questions The Lantern posted to its Instagram story, and results are not a representative sample of all Ohio State students.

One in three of the 300 respondents said they had issues with mold in their dorm or with plumbing or locks. The rest reported that the issue was either not listed or that they had no problem with their dorm.

Of the people who reported an issue, about 90 said it took over five days to fix, and the majority said the issue returned.

The Facilities Condition Index, or FCI, measures overall building conditions and sets 10% as an industry benchmark for buildings to be considered “fair.”

“With the size and scale of our campus, some deferred maintenance will exist with buildings at different life stages,” Hedman said. “The campus-wide FCI is 11%, while the Student Life portfolio — which includes residence halls — is slightly lower than the campus average at 9%.”

Hedman said Ohio State has been prioritizing critical building systems or components.

“That Facility Condition Index number is a wide view, but you must also understand that Ohio State is able to prioritize critical building systems or components,” Hedman said.

Mold is not identified as a separate problem within service requests.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, research suggests that a school’s physical environment can play a major role in academic performance.

It reports that the presence of mold can increase the risk of asthma and other related respiratory health effects by 30-50%.

According to Change the Air Foundation, universities have lacked in addressing growing mold issues across the country.

Michael Rubino, president and co-founder of the foundation, who conducted the research, said mold is becoming a health epidemic in dorms.

The Lantern reached out to the foundation for comment, but at the time of publication, did not receive a response.

On the foundation’s website, an article titled “Addressing the Rising Health Epidemic: Mold in College Dorms” describes the research that Rubino and the foundation conducted, looking into the significance of indoor air quality in university housing.

“I’ve found that a lot of college dorms have issues with mold, which led to a lot of media coverage over the past few years,” Rubino said in the article. “But we still have a lot of work to do to bring awareness to this topic.”

The foundation said common issues that lead to mold in college dorms include burst pipes and leaks, flooding, high humidity indoors, aging HVAC systems and plumbing and inadequate air quality.

Roughly 31% of all service requests filed about Ohio State dorm buildings involved a problem the Change the Air Foundation identifies as a leading cause of mold.

Hedman said the most common issues on campus revolve around building exteriors and HVAC systems.

“As some buildings reach that end of their useful life, demolition and rebuild or renovation is considered and has been utilized on various projects over the last decade,” Hedman said.

Ohio State does take into consideration the extent of repairs needed for dorms around campus.

The university announced at a March Board of Trustees meeting that Taylor and Drackett Towers will undergo extensive interior and exterior renovations and reopen in August 2028, per prior Lantern reporting. Jones Tower will be demolished.

Initially, the three towers were supposed to go under renovations and reopen by August 2030. Ohio State decided that remodeling Jones Tower would “not provide a practical return on investment,” ultimately leading to the plan for demolition, according to Isaacs in prior reporting.

Brzoska said parents questioned why these three dorms were under construction and demolition compared to the older ones.

Taylor just surpassed its 60-year anniversary, while Drackett is a year older. Compared to these two dorms, Jones is the youngest at 57.

The oldest dorm on campus is Mack Hall, which is just over 100 years old. Fechko House and Baker and Canfield Halls follow at 95 and 86 years respectively. There are 15 dorms older than Taylor, Drackett and Jones.

Ohio State expedited these renovations after Taylor's unexpected closure, per prior Lantern reporting.

Ohio State’s Framework 3.0 Plan outlines the university's future plans and developments on campus. According to its website, Student Life is prioritizing residence hall renovations, new recreation and dining facilities and additional turf fields.

Students walk down the pathway that connects most dorms on North Campus. Incoming and current students have much to say about the condition of the dorms.

“A lot of lost trust in the university, especially with everything that’s happened this year,” Brzoska said. “I’ve had a lot of parents share frustrations and say that it is ultimately just a reflection of the administration.”

Wagner said the last thing Ohio State wants to do is close dorms.

“Most institutions will ride right on the edge of that and try to avoid that from happening, but invest as little as possible there because it’s really not a revenue-generating kind of opportunity for the college,” Wagner said. “Certain money can’t be spent on certain things.”

Hedman said Ohio State has been actively prioritizing deferred maintenance investments, allocating about $130 million a year for the past five years.

When the two dorms unexpectedly closed, Ohio State provided assistance to residents to accommodate unforeseen costs.

Taylor and Lawrence residents received $400-450 to their university accounts and $75 on their BuckID. This is in addition to the $1000 Taylor students were given if they chose to move off-campus. It is not known if Lawrence residents received a similar stipend.

Brzoska said they had two friends who each lived in Taylor and Lawrence and received the stipends. Both told Brzoska that it was not enough.

In light of Ohio State’s master lease expansion, Wagner said the university uses a public-private partnership, which means it outsources dorms.

“That’s the kind of the model that a lot of institutions are going to, so they’ll put those residential buildings into a public-private partnership, and then they can focus renewal and replacement funds on things like science or research areas that are revenue generating,” Wagner said.

The expansion led upperclassmen who had already signed a lease at StateHouse Lane and Norwich to either move to a different StateHouse-owned building, often at higher rent, or independently find new housing altogether.

Initially, Brzoska said they were told not to call the parents of Taylor residents in light of the unforeseen closure, but in the spring semester they were added back to the list to gather feedback from parents of first-year students.

Brzoska said they have received varying reviews about how Ohio State handled closing Taylor.

“I’ve gotten many different responses," Brzoska said. “Whether that’s been from ‘They’ve handled it great,’ ‘They have given us enough of a stipend to cover enough rent’ or has been awful.”

Wagner said this is a common problem among universities, balancing students' living experience with the maintenance of revenue-generating facilities. They said the facilities department is commonly the first to experience budget cuts.

“Ohio State is not the only institution in this boat,” Wagner said. “Facilities is generally the first budget that’s cut if there are budget issues.”

Isaacs said Ohio State has worked diligently over the past three years to increase facilities’ budget to keep pace with rising costs while still maintaining campus buildings.

Brzoska said parents and students are dissatisfied with Ohio State’s dorms.

“Parents and students are ultimately just upset with being unable to have the full collegiate experience,” Brzoska said. “There’s a lot of first-years moving off campus and living in apartments. I thought we had more time to learn how to do these things.”

Currently, Ohio State requires students to live on campus for the first two years of college, unless they fall under a specified exception.

Due to Ohio State's expansion of its master lease agreement with StateHouse Norwich and Lane, underclassmen can live off campus while still fulfilling the two-year requirement.

The Lantern attempted to contact Jim Bogac, director of Ohio State’s Facilities Support Services, and was redirected to Hedman and Isaacs, who answered The Lantern’s questions.

Of all the people Brzoska is required to call, parents are their favorite.

“I love them so much,” Brzoska said. “I think that when I’m calling them, I have the longest conversations with them.”

Above all else, Brzoska said parents are proud of their kids and want them to have the best college experience possible, which means Brzoska wants to learn about students’ experience and know every resource at Ohio State to provide the best service.

“I’ve gotten a lot more involved in keeping up with resources at Ohio State,” Brzoska said. “Every call is almost like, ‘I had no idea about this, thank you so much.’”