The Great Treehouse Disaster of 2024: One Month Later
March 15, 2024 • Written by Cassandra Senna
On Friday, February 2, 2024 at 11:19 pm, I received an email in my inbox with the following subject line: "Tree House Sprinkler System Not Working; All Students Relocated". As someone who relishes in drama that I'm not directly involved in (I commute), I was immediately intrigued. This was the third incident in a string of facility issues at MassArt just in this school year – including the small fire on the seventh floor of Tower, and the debris falling from that same building during a particularly windy day. News stations took to this new, developing story quickly, and the word began to spread – and so did fury, the fury of the students whose week would be upended by this disaster.
Treehouse constructed in 2012 (predating the Design and Media Center), according to this Boston Herald article, and was inspired by Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life (1905). It was also designed by ADD Inc., which is based in Boston. However, despite being one of the newest buildings on campus, Treehouse has been subject to numerous issues just this year. The latest of these issues has been what I have been referring to as "The Great Treehouse Disaster of 2024" – February 2nd's evacuation.
According to the aforementioned late-night February 2nd email, the debacle began when a frozen pipe became damaged, leading to the sprinkler system not working. This is a major cause for concern, especially when you consider that if a fire were to break out on one of Treehouse's twenty floors, it wouldn't be able to be put out until firefighters were able to reach it. According to an student I spoke to (who wishes to remain anonymous, and for the duration of this article will be referred to as "Alpha"), the "damage" that the pipe sustained resulted in it bursting, causing the stairs to freeze over. It was intensely dangerous to have had students continue to reside in the building.
Treehouse residents were thus unexpectedly displaced. Another student I interviewed (whose code name will be "Beta") said that they were only notified by email that this whole issue had happened. This email went out at 9:30 PM, and everyone had to retrieve whatever belongings they could get and leave by 10:30 PM. They then had to relocate themselves to Kennedy. "It was literally so stressful. We got less than an hour and I know some people were out of the building/sleeping when the EMAIL was sent out - it wasn't even a phone call," says Alpha. Alpha also claims that it was recommended that students leave any emotional support animals inside if they weren't going to be able to get accommodations to bring them somewhere else.
Originally, Treehouse residents were supposed to be able to go back into their dorms that Monday (the 5th), but this had to be extended to the next Thursday (the 8th) because there wouldn't be enough time to have tested the newly repaired sprinkler system by then. Students were allowed to go back in to retrieve more belongings in the couple of days afterward, but they had to fill out a form first and only had fifteen minutes with an escort. Luckily, the students were able to successfully reenter their dorms starting at 7:00 AM that Thursday. However, this left the question of where these students were supposed to stay for nearly a week with whatever they were able to gather, which, in Alpha's case was, "3 pairs of pants - a couple shirts and my laptop and stuff."
I asked both of my interviewees where they ended up staying in the meantime. "My roommate and I [were] staying in a hotel until tmrw [sic] thanks to their dad and then we [traveled] back to my house for the remainder of the week," Alpha said. Alpha themselves lives less than an hour away from Boston without traffic, but their roommate is an out-of-state student. Beta is also an out of state student, and she was able to stay with a friend of a friend at Simmons. Unfortunately for Beta, she was ill before the evacuation, which only got worse after the dilemma. When I interviewed her on February 6th, she said, "For the past three days I've been constantly blowing my nose and I've noticed that blood has been coming out in my mucus. It started off as just veins or spots but it slowly has turned into bigger chunks of clots. Recently it has been subsiding and I haven't seen any recently but I am still somewhat concerned. My parents are worried about my health and safety due to past issues with Treehouse and now finding this out… I thought I'd feel safe in a supposed 'college state' but now I don't even know anymore."
According to Beta, there was a lack of communication between the other Colleges of the Fenway schools in regards to the situation, at least initially. "If I'm correct there was only an official email/announcement on either Sunday or Monday night. Simmons students only knew about it through text groups or rumors about what happened," she says.
Ensuing emails from Academic Affairs announced that first-year classes were canceled on Monday, but the professors were still expected to be in the studios in case students wanted to use them. First-year classes from Tuesday to Thursday were required to be hybrid (even though one of mine wasn't… but that's beside the point!). Non-first-year classes that had first-year students in them were expected to offer excused absences and deadline extensions for first-year students who had to miss class due to the situation. However, first-years aren't the only residents of treehouse. Unfortunately, those students were not given the same treatment, and were only offered excused absences.
A petition began circulating soon after the trouble began, asking for compensation for the Treehouse residents for their troubles. This compensation was allegedly in the works prior to the petition gaining traction, and was received by students in the form of a check based on the amount of money equal to "...the days [they] were out of the building, based on the rate [they] currently pay…" and, "A per day rate to cover food, transportation, and miscellaneous costs [they] may have incurred," according to an email sent to residents. Also included was a Starbucks gift card. Some students were skeptical of this, and were unsure if they would actually receive their money in the end - but as of today it looks like all affected students have been properly compensated.
This was not the beginning of Treehouse's many issues, and is rather just the latest problem posed to the students who have the seeming misfortune of living there. Alpha says that the catastrophes started as soon as the residents moved in. "I mean a pipe burst right before move in so the entire 3rd floor (where our amenities are) was completely inaccessible for a long time…we didn't have our communal kitchen until November… So unless you were fortunate enough to be able to afford a microwave, mini fridge and other electronic cooking appliances then eating options were extremely limited," they said, "So amenities that were promised to us even before moving in were not readily available/available within a reasonable time frame…And even now they're still spotty."
It would also be impossible to bring up Treehouse's instability without talking about the elevators. I can personally attest to how many of my classmates last semester were late to class because they were literally trapped in the elevator. It was so frequent that when someone wasn't there, we just assumed that's what had happened. Alpha said that at one point, all three of Treehouse's elevators were down, and the stairs were the only option. This is extremely troubling from an accessibility standpoint, as it causes students with physical disabilities to potentially have to take almost twenty flights of stairs to leave or return to their dorms. Beta said that the elevators have dropped five stories at different points. To my knowledge, no one has actually been seriously injured because of the elevators, but it seems like to some students, the emotional turmoil that comes from worrying about whether you could be the first is tremendous.
Many students are aware of the recent troubles in the laundry room of Treehouse. Thankfully, this issue has been resolved for the time being, as the school has changed vendors recently. Earlier in the semester, the laundry room's fire alarms were once going off constantly because of a heating issue, says Beta. Therefore, starting from the first week after winter break until the past couple of weeks, Treehouse residents had to go to the laundry room in the Artists' Residence building (a different dorm building a short walk away) or find an alternative method to clean their clothes. This meant that there were two entire buildings of students trying to use the same laundry room. Also, Alpha says that the laundry room was having issues at the beginning of the fall semester, too. This new vendor should hopefully prevent any future issues with residents doing laundry.
The whole situation has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many students, Treehouse residents or otherwise. "I've been beating myself up about coming here now because my parents are spending THE OUT OF STATE TUITION for me to come here and all that's really happened is bad things… Because of this I honestly have considered transferring to a college back in California… I have made close friends here, and they've made it worth staying here but after all this while still having to pay the full out of state tuition… is really making me consider possibly transferring colleges," said Beta. It has also raised questions about where the school's funds are going, as evidenced by a student-lead protest held on February 20th. Students want to see the money they pay in tuition be a good value to them, their education, and quality of life, and many of them feel that it isn't. Many are just waiting for the next disaster to strike, an apparently inevitable future for MassArt students.
Before ending this article, I’d like to clarify that I am in no way attacking Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the administration, the staff, Capstone, or the people who built the buildings. This incident is something that they couldn't have foreseen, and they tried their best given the strenuous circumstances. This is meant only to share the perspectives of students who were personally affected by the situation. All information in this article was sourced from emails I have received from the school and personal testimonials from affected students.
