J.T. BUCHHEIT | Chief Copy Editor

From keys that don’t work to doors that don’t lock and air-conditioning that doesn’t start, maintenance workers have a lot to deal with. The staff at Lindenwood is no exception.

Sixteen workers make up the maintenance staff, and none of them have a shortage of work. The beginning of the year is always the most active for the staff.

“There are 3,000 students living on campus,” said Timothy Crutchley, director of campus planning. “Think of all the things that go on. This is the busiest time of the year, but we’re on the downhill side of that.”

The workers go wherever they are needed on campus. Crutchley said the load is lightening for maintenance workers, but the size of the campus will prevent them from getting to everything immediately.

“There’s always air-conditioning that doesn’t work, there’s heat that doesn’t work,” he said. “The campus is about a million square feet, but our guys are prioritizing and writing things down.”

The priorities are based on how important the issues are. Problems that need to be fixed right away are at the top, while those that are less important are below them.

“There are issues that get fixed the same day, and there are some that probably take a day or two,” Crutchley said. “It depends on what it is. Something that’s a life-safety issue, like you can’t have a toilet overflowing, you can’t have a water leak. Those types of things get moved to the top of the list. But let’s say there’s just a door that sticks a little bit when you open it. That doesn’t get as high a priority as maybe someone’s air-conditioning that isn’t working.”

Despite the potentially long wait times to get something fixed, there is reason to believe that people will get their issues fixed soon as the swamp of demands for repairs begins to thin.