MUSICIANS MEET MOLD

On Wednesday, September 17, classes held in the Debose Music Hall were canceled until further notice due to the conditions of the building. There has been a constant growth of mold in the music hall, but recently the condition has escalated. A meeting was held to discuss how this problem would be handled, but efforts to find a solution really started last week when students organized a small protest. The decision was to move classes out of the Debose Music Hall to Steward Hall across the street, while the mold is being removed. So far the cleaning and removal of the mold has been progressive. The mold removal began in the annex of the building, then the choir room, the piano labs and the rest of the hall. Chair of Visual and Performing Arts Dr. E. Hines, spoke highly of the new acting chancellor and his actions towards the matter. “When we reported it to Mr. McClinton he called in some professional people to move everybody out, get it removed (the mold) and get them back in there,” finished Hines.
Prior to the fall semester, the air would constantly shut on and off, which caused the mold flourish, giving students and staff a rude awakening. Certain rooms in the building have more amounts of molds than others, including the choir room and in the recital hall in the annex of the building. Mold grows best in warm, damp, and humid conditions and exposure to molds can cause symptoms such as nasal stuffiness, throat irritation, coughing or wheezing, and eye or skin irritation. One of the causes of the mold is flat-roofs, which allows water to sit and then leak into the building. Another cause is condensation from the air conditioning unit. Dr. C. Lloyd, Southern University’s faculty member since 1991 says that mold in the building has always been an ongoing problem. “For example, the choir room’s music library and the choir room itself has always been problematic, so having students singing in there has always been a concern.” Senior music education major Sandra Isumi, one of the Brazilian transfer students that came to Southern University for the music department, made efforts to help out over the summer by cleaning; but soon realized that she was lucky to be alive. “I think I started to get worried about my health when one of the professionals said I could have died from cleaning out the music library.”
Both teachers and students in the department are getting sick. In efforts to protest against the mold in the building, a small group of students, mostly music majors, gathered sometime last week and wore mask on their faces to show concerns towards their health. “I don’t know if it was because of the mold, but I came in the music building and afterwards I had a headache and I’ve been sneezing and coughing,” says Ariel Pierre, a junior music education major that spends a lot of her time in the music building. “The music department is the heartbeat of the university,” says Dr. Lloyd. “We are very lucky to have such talented students and they deserve to get an education in a proper environment so they can work to their fullest potential.” The classes that have been relocated will begin again starting sometime next week.