This story was originally published in the June print issue of Mustang News. It has been updated to include details about the St. Fratty’s Day incident and the resulting damage costs.
It was April 2023. Computer science junior Adi Gottumukkala descended the stairway to Estrella’s fifth floor apartments in Poly Canyon Village (PCV), excited for a celebratory day ahead for his friends’ combined 20th birthday parties.
His walk took an unexpected turn— a detached exit sign came loose, slamming into his head.
The collision gave Gottumukala a second-impact concussion, having previously received a concussion his freshman year. He remembers the rest of his sophomore year as “foggy,” a feeling that persisted into his junior year.
The extent of his concussions could lead to brain hemorrhaging, swelling and seizures, exacerbating symptoms. These symptoms can occur at any time following a severe concussion, not just immediately after the impact. After consulting with the Health Center, Gottumukkala was asked to miss two weeks of school.
University Housing launches investigations to find residents responsible for damages when incidents occur. The Housing Fee Schedule includes estimated prices for each common damage throughout the residence halls. On average, an exit sign damage costs $300 to replace. Regardless of the damage, the minimum fine on the schedule is $5 per person.
He hopes University Housing improves their investigative processes overseeing damage cases, to prevent future injuries like his own. Gottummukala received no compensation or aid from the University, aside from a notice to miss classes from the University Health Center.
“I should be able to walk in my own apartment and feel safe, right?”
Adi Gottummukala, computer science junior
Gottummukala’s experience is not unique — student residents commonly experience the dangers of broken ceiling tiles, black mold, unsafe water filters and frustrating financial burdens to restore these damages.
According to University Housing policy, “residents have the right to environments conducive to sleep and study, environments respecting human dignity and clean and safe environments.”
Yet, the residence halls accumulated 3,075 incidents in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to an email to Mustang News. The $195,709 in total charges does not account for all 3,075 damages.
Red Bricks account for the largest sum of dorm damages
Nearly a mile away, Santa Lucia resident and biomedical engineering sophomore Jake Larson found himself on the receiving end of a similar experience. Spring Quarter 2023, Larson heard four students running through the hall and smashing ceiling tiles.
Awoken by the noise, he opened his door to students he had never seen before– students who were not residents of Santa Lucia.
“They broke into a sprint,” Larson added. “I got up and chased them out of the building.”
While chasing them, Larson was pushed into his doorframe, among the broken tiles and dust. He was later diagnosed with a concussion.
Larson was also among the Santa Lucia residents who had to pay for the damages with the building’s party fund.
Each year, RAs are given a budget to host “programming” events for their residents which provide “social opportunities and educational experiences for residents,” according to University Housing’s RA Recruitment site. Each quarter, the residential advisors receive a $150 budget for activities.
Despite avoiding further charges, Larson expressed frustration. He said the damages weren’t caused by residents or RAs, yet they were still being punished.
“It deprived our dorm of a budget that we did not deserve to lose.”
Jake Larson, former Santa Lucia resident
According to University Housing, most damages from 2018 to 2022 occurred in the Red Bricks halls. Cleaning fees and ceiling damages accounted for 25% of all residential hall damages from 2018 to 2022.
When individual liability cannot be identified, each resident is charged with a share of the repair cost, according to University Housing Assistant Director of Outreach & Communications Nona Matthews. This practice has become increasingly prominent as damages have multiplied across residence halls. “Most of the damage this year is occurring in our residence halls,” Matthews said.
“Incidents of vandalism are reported to CPPD and investigated by the Office of Student Rights & Responsibilities (OSRR),” Matthews wrote in an email to Mustang News.
Meanwhile, low-income program Residential Learning Communities (RLCs) have significantly less damages. TRIO Achievers, Cal Poly Scholars and EOP students are all low-income programs on Cal Poly’s campus.
Historically, the low-income program RLCs are placed in the Red Bricks because rooms are priced lower, but in the 2022-23 year, the programs requested its participants be in yakʔitʸutʸu.
According to Matthews, “Cal Poly Scholars, EOP, and TRIO jointly decide on the placement of their RLCs. Offering a lower-cost option has been a consistent request over the years.”
Additionally, University Housing consults annually with campus partners on the locations of RLCs, allowing them to either rotate or stay in the same locations based on feedback from both residents and campus partners.
When students apply for housing, University Housing intentionally prioritizes the term RLC to encourage student community, rather than focusing on the building features.
Despite these efforts, each building earned a reputation — Red Bricks is known for its chaos, the Yosemite towers are consumed by black mold concerns and the yakʔitʸutʸu halls are the ‘luxurious’ dorms, according to business administration freshman Purajit Ghosh.
“yakʔitʸutʸu kids live in a bubble.”
Purajit Ghosh, business administration freshman
Ghosh lives in Trinity, a Red Bricks building, as a resident of the business college RLC. He and his fellow floormates have experienced up to $60 in fines throughout fall quarter.
“I feel like after a while, these damages don’t become shocking,” Ghosh said. “They just become frustrating because they’re happening over and over and over again in charges being given to us.”
St. Fratty’s Day aftermath
In March 2024, a wave of damages cascaded Muir Hall during the early hours of St. Fratty’s Day. Some residents camped outside their halls for hours, in friends’ cars or other buildings’ common rooms. Students shared their grievances with the University Housing protocol.
In response, University Housing implemented measures to prevent extensive damage. Additionally, according to Matthews, an investigation searching for responsible individuals went into full effect.
As of April 2024, Matthews confirmed University Housing does not have a total cost of damages or further information to share about identifying specific individuals.
“Given the extent of the damages incurred during St. Patrick’s Day, it is possible that individuals may be identified for portions of what took place,” she said.
Matthews added damage costs where responsible parties couldn’t be identified would become the collective responsibility of the student residents. Ultimately, the investigation was unsuccessful.
Each resident in each respective Red Bricks residence hall was asked to pay a sum of the total damage fine.
Tenaya Hall had a total damage cost of $11,829 and Muir Hall totaled $11,816, the aggregate costs confirmed by Matt Lazier. The damage included broken fire suppression and alarm systems, smashed ceiling tiles leaving debris and a need for deep cleaning and air quality restoration throughout the units.
“Thousands of dollars in damage was done in addition to hundreds of hours spent cleaning up the mess,” an initial message to Muir residents said. “All of this was unnecessary.”
The message also asked residents to help identify those who have caused damage through online reporting and sharing videos and photos.
Given the extensive damages and changes in protocol that followed, Ghosh expressed a sense of uneasiness with residence hall fines.
Ghosh said he feels the current policies to prevent damage fines don’t actively protect the students. Due to increased nightly vandalism and damages during the 2023 Fall quarter, University Housing introduced an outside vendor, Miller Security, to monitor activity and maintain security from Thursdays to Sundays.
They work closely with University Housing staff and CPPD to report and address issues within the residential communities. However, these precautions were recently amped up even more.
In response to the destruction of St. Fratty’s, University Housing launched on April 4 the Community Support Program specifically in Muir and Tenaya.
Shifts are from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., and residents can only access the dorm through the front entrance and check in with a community service leader (CSL), according to past Mustang News coverage. CSLs are allocated between four shifts per evening, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.
“Nothing’s actually being done to prevent these charges,” Ghosh said. “I feel like there’s no need to go to such extreme measures if they just have more standard measures.”
Ghosh suggested installing cameras as a solution. With cameras, he explained that RAs would not have to stay up all night to patrol the halls and University Housing can easily identify those responsible for damages.
“It shouldn’t have to come to that fact that police are involved and we start ID scans,” he said. “It can be prevented much more efficiently before it becomes that big of a problem.”
Who should be responsible for paying damages?
Business administration sophomore Anahi Silva lived in Tenaya as a resident and RA. As a resident, she paid nearly $200 to $300 in damage fees. In Fall 2023, her residents paid $60 in fines each.
“In a building like Tenaya, damages seem to remain constant and I think if these damages were to start affecting low-income students there should be exemptions given, especially if they are not contributing to the damage,” Silva said.
According to Matthews, there is no financial support for low-income residents.
“Resident income isn’t available to the committee that reviews damage appeals,” Matthews said. “If a resident feels their financial status is something that should be considered during an appeal, they can include that information in the Housing Damage Charge Appeal Form.”
When receiving a notice of individual damage, students are given five days to complete the Housing Damage Charge Appeal Form, which comes with its own set of restrictions.
The appeal is only considered if the damage charge was incorrectly applied, the student presented new information or there was a special circumstance to be considered. In the case of a damage investigation, a student would have less than a week to plead innocent to the charge.
This process considers some damages to be extreme cases – in the case of Muir Hall, residents still have not been charged as a result of the ongoing investigation of the 2024 St. Fratty’s Day celebration.
For many instances where damages do not launch into an extensive investigation, low-income students may experience the depths of University Housing’s fining process.
With the TRIO, EOP and Scholar halls primarily in the yakʔitʸutʸu, low-income students benefit from fewer damage charges than other halls.
Electrical engineering sophomore Alejandro Maldonado said he is glad to be part of TRIO and Cal Poly Scholars. Living in the yakʔitʸutʸu residence halls last year, he paid a total of $5 in damage fines.
Maldonado said he was not responsible for any of the building’s damages and felt like it did not make sense for the entirety of the floor to be charged for someone else’s damage. He added there was an active attempt to avoid damage fines in the community.
“We took care of trash and made sure everyone knew to take care of the floor, or else we would be charged,” he said. “I believe the university should hold the guilty party accountable instead of distributing charges to all residents.”
University Housing has implemented business changes
Housing was unable to provide Mustang News with the corresponding damage fees with each damage available from 2018 to 2022 as well as all 3,075 damages due to system changes.
In 2019, Housing began transitioning into a single system of record for maintenance and to automate billing. This is a “multi-year software consolidation project,” according to Matthews.
As of Spring 2024, Housing is still working through the final phase of this transition to achieve “operational efficiencies.” In this process, Housing lost access to data from two software systems that were retired and are no longer being used.
Prior to this transitional time frame, Housing was operating on this fee schedule. As of October 2020, this updated fee schedule recognized some changes in verbiage and charges; most prominently, ceiling tile damages, which account for nearly a fourth of all damages, were lowered from $50 per damage to $25.
Making amends
Before moving out, psychology sophomore Riya Mahtaney and her floormates decided to memorialize the chaos of the Red Bricks. When the damages were out of the residents’ hands, there was only one thing left to do – remember the good times each of them shared.
“At the end of the year, we each signed a piece of the broken ceiling that was already damaged,” Mahtaney said.
However, it’s a last-resort effort to make amends for what created so much chaos. Accepting their fates living in the Red Bricks, students like Mahtaney keep the chaos as a memory, despite still wishing for increased security.
Until then, Cal Poly’s on-campus residents share one common goal. Regardless of whether or not they receive it, all they ask for are the promises University Housing outlines: “environments conducive to sleep and study, environments respecting human dignity and clean and safe environments.”
