To read about last school year’s update on the Rothenberg Humanities Building, click here.
In Stephanie C. ’25’s third week of school, the overwhelming stench in Rothenberg Humanities Building (RHB) Room 40 forced her AP Calculus BC class to relocate. “There’s really poor ventilation in the room too. There was no way to get rid of the smell,” said Stephanie. After trying to tolerate the smell for twenty minutes, her nearly 20-person class and teacher succumbed to the odor, opting to leave both the classroom and Rothenberg Building behind. Stephanie continued, “It was disrupting to class. We also didn’t know if there would be another alternative classroom, so we wasted time finding that too.”
Ms. Dahl, Math Department Chair and Calculus teacher said, “Anytime that we have to leave to go hunting for a different classroom, that takes away from the class flow in the class time…that’s a detriment.” She also explained that because Calculus BC is such an accelerated class with a “very tight” timeline, the move was especially disruptive to student learning.
(Ella B. ’25)
This summer, Director of Facilities Ms. Irina Kotsinian led Westridge’s facilities team in entering what she called “phase two” of addressing the smell. She described the work, saying, “It was lots of plumbing work done in the basement area to replace old, cracked piping infrastructure from the basement areas of Rothenberg [Building].”
Because students are on campus the majority of the year, it is difficult for Ms. Kotsinian and her team to address the issues all in one swoop. “We have [a] very short time to perform the entire scope of work. We have to subdivide it into phases,” Ms. Kotsinian said. She described the work completed over the summer as phase two, and she anticipates at least one more phase in the coming year if not two.
Those phases will happen when Westridge goes on break next and “will include not only plumbing but also other systems that we need to upgrade.” She explained that the Rothenberg Building requires a complete overhaul in order to fully eliminate the smell. “The building is getting old and having partly replaced piping and some old [piping] is not gonna give us the ideal results,” said Ms. Kotsinian.
Looking forward to finally seeing successful results, Ms. Kotsinian said, “We only will see positive results when we methodically replace and repair, phase by phase, the entire building infrastructure.”
