Among faculty in the sciences at Mercer, concern exists regarding its steps to address cleanliness in offices, classrooms, and labs. Professors specifically worry about the potential safety risks it poses to students and fellow colleagues.
When asked about the steps the administration has taken to fix the problem, Carlo Alfare, Professor of Chemistry at Mercer, says, “[The college] gives the [cleaning] contract to the lowest bidder and they’re not going to send [extra] people here to clean. Look at these floors.”
Ellen Genovesi, Professor of Biology says, “We have a lot of concerns, in particular, the cleaning of the lab floors. It was obvious that they really hadn’t been mopped in quite a long time and they were getting really, really dirty.”
Dirty lab floors pose risks, professors say, especially with the series of mold-related problems Mercer has had in the past two years.
Genovesi states, “It’s overall cleanliness. It’s also, we had a lot of problems last year with mold in the labs. We had mold growth on everything. We had items inside cabinets that were covered with mold.”
Mercer did take the necessary steps to remediate the mold problem, however, Genovesi says.
“Maintenance did a lot of work in controlling the humidity. We have permanently mounted dehumidifiers that have pumps. It automatically empties itself, so the humidity levels have been fairly low considering how hot it was at the beginning of the semester.” Genovesi says, but notes that this doesn’t address the issue of cleanliness that they are facing now.
Genovesi states, “I had asked several individuals for a copy of the cleaning contract. I really didn’t get anywhere with that, so I put in an OPRA request. It’s a request for open, public documents, because I really wanted to look and see, you know, what had the cleaning company promised to deliver? Are our expectations too high? Are our expectations too low? One thing I found is that they’re supposed to do the counters every night. And I was like, I’ve been kind of doing them, so there are areas that we were cleaning that they should have been cleaning.”
Other tasks, like cleaning the whiteboards daily, were hit and miss according to Genovesi, even though it was included in the contract.
Chemistry faculty are particularly vigilant about lab cleanliness since many chemicals and biohazard items are stored there.
Professor Alfare says, “They have got to be careful because they can’t just grab a bottle and move it. If it’s an acid, for instance, and they drop it, they don’t know what’s in it.”
Professor Genovesi adds that things have been getting better since meeting with the regional manager of ABM, the company that provides the cleaning services at Mercer.
She says, “So, probably in the last three, four weeks, it has improved,” while explaining that the process took about seven weeks into the semester to get started.
Outside of the science department, questions remain whether or not other areas at Mercer are getting properly cleaned.
