If you talk to students at Langston about problems they face, you’ll likely hear about the water. Michael Prather, a current student, shared his experience with the most recent water outage. “I work off campus so whenever I wake up and notice I must use a water bottle to brush my teeth [it] is upsetting.”
Students feel inconvenienced by these outages, which they think occur too frequently. “I now prepare for outages by keeping bottles on standby and handling my business early in the day to avoid coming across being out of water,” Prather said.
In addition to water outages, students have also expressed concern about the water color when it does work. The Langston University Parents Facebook Group and LU Students Group Chat are filled with these concerns: “Another water outage!!! This is beyond ridiculous at this point”; “It’s sad that I pay 9k a semester to not have water every other week”; “For the only HBCU in OK they have to do better because this is getting annoying.”
Langston University gets its water from Logan County. According to the Langston Division of Operations, “Water outages on campus can happen for a variety of reasons. For example, if repairs are being completed involving a campus water line, the University is required to turn the water service off to ensure the repair can be made safely. The campus water service is also affected whenever there is a water outage in the surrounding area, such as within Logan County or in Guthrie.”
Some students believe that the problems have gotten worse since the dismantling of the Langston water tower on October 17, 2022. However, the Langston water tower has not been in use for campus water for over a decade.
Another concern some students have raised is the appearance of the water, which sometimes looks cloudy or discolored. Kierra Washington, a biology major, has had the opportunity to test the campus water.
“In my class we were discussing the water color and tested it. We found minor bacteria in the water, but it is safe. Cloudy water is caused by air and water blending in the pipe. Before I knew any of this information, I didn’t trust the water here,” Kierra said.
The university is currently working to prevent outage issues on campus. According to an email from LU Operations, “Outages occurring in Guthrie or Logan County are out of our control and cannot be resolved directly by the University. On campus, the installation of additional valves in the existing water infrastructure will help us isolate outages to small areas when repairs are needed. The installation of valves is an ongoing process to modernize our infrastructure which takes time to complete.”
LU Operations anticipates working on these values over multiple summers. When outages occur,university officials work to alert the campus as quickly as possible via email communications. Langston is committed to continuing communication whenever they are alerted to an outage.
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The Gazette serves as the student voice of Langston University. It is produced within the Department of Communication as a teaching tool and local news source for the campus community. The views and opinions expressed within are those of the writers whose names appear with the articles and do not necessarily represent the views of Langston University.
