By Richard Williams, Contributing Writer
At St. Bonaventure University, the campus housekeeping department has made numerous changes to their program for the fall semester due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic has changed everything,” said Jared Smith, facilities director at St. Bonaventure. “Cleaning now is 24/7 and weekends are just as important as weekdays now.”
The program has had to make numerous changes to help keep the campus safe. They have also had to significantly increase their hours to ensure that the campus stays clean.
“To deal with the necessary cleaning and disinfecting of common spaces, we formed a couple of two person crews that only do COVID-19 related cleaning and disinfecting seven days a week,” said Smith.
Housekeeping devised a plan in order to make sure they could keep the entire campus safe during the week.
“We had to hire additional staff to cover the weekends,” said Smith. To make sure their plan was able to be completed, housekeeping had to hire more workers to ensure they could reach every building on campus.
Before the pandemic, the department did not look much different.
“We already cleaned all of the areas, we just needed to increase the frequency of how many times cleaning was done,” said Smith.
The pandemic has increased the amount of cleaning needed to be done, while also providing challenges.
“Keeping a sufficient stock of hand sanitizer, disinfectants, wipes, masks, etc. is a daily challenge,” said Smith, highlighting the challenges brought forth by the added workload.
Housekeeping must follow all the same guidelines that students and other staff do on campus. This means that they have to clean buildings while remaining socially distant, wearing face masks, and other protective measures listed in the universities re-opening plan.
“This pandemic has forced us to look at everything we do in housekeeping and some of the changes will likely turn into permanent positive changes.”
The student body appears to have taken notice of housekeeping’s hard work.
“I appreciate the way housekeeping maintains and keeps my floor looking great,” said freshman education major Will Tormey.
Housekeeping will continue to play its part in keeping students on campus for the rest of the semester and the changes made by the pandemic may prove to last after it passes.
