Urination in Mason Hall Oven Causes Stir

By COLLEEN HUBER

The housekeeping staff was greeted with a surprise in the Mason Hall oven on Monday morning after someone urinated in an oven.

After noticing something wet at the bottom of the oven, housekeeping notified facility services, who then informed Kari Gent, assistant director of residence life, that someone had urinated in the oven.

The incident occurred sometime over the weekend before Oct. 1.

According to Gent, it could have happened anytime that weekend after the resident assistants on duty had finished their last rounds.

Residents were notified via email and Facebook that the kitchen would be locked while housekeeping sanitized the oven and from that point onward after the RAs completed their final rounds, according to Gent.

“Mason residents, by-and-large, at that point, were not really using the kitchen that we could tell,” said Gent.

For about a week following the incident, Gent had the RAs lock the kitchen after their last round at night and unlock it in the morning. Once fall break came, the kitchen was once again, open at all times to residents.

“The entire situation was really an anomaly,” said Gent. “We hadn’t been having any issues of that nature and we haven’t had any issues since.”

None of the Mason residents brought any concerns or complaints about the issue about the occurrence to Gent, and the Mason Hall Council chose to allow the staff to manage how to address the students on the issue. The staff made the decision to lock the kitchen for the following week.

The person responsible for urinating in the oven has not been identified, and no charges have been assessed, according to Gent.

Gent said the issue was handled as well as it could have been, and, as with a lot of situations in community areas, no one has been found responsible.

“I wish we had a better sense of who did it so we could hold that person accountable,” said Gent.

The incident is similar to one that occurred in 2008, when a series of defecations were repeatedly found in the parking garage, according to the Feb. 7, 2008 edition of the Bullet.