Former residents of Jeanne Mance Hall are adjusting to life in different residence halls across campus after a fire in the dormitory caused them to move out for the semester.

On Thursday, March 6, a group of them met in the Silver Maple Ballroom to discuss their experiences and provide community for each other. 

“Welcome everyone to the Jeanne Mance Hall ‘From the Ashes’ meeting,” said Thalia Lombardo, a sophomore who organized the gathering. “We wanted to move out, but not like this.”

The Feb. 14 fire was caused by a battery-powered skateboard, according to a UVM CatAlert from the University Fire and Safety Teams released on the same day. 

The battery went into thermal runaway, according to UVM Fire Marshall Barry Simays, which he said caused the ceiling sprinklers to go off, extinguish the blaze and extensively damage the residence. 

Lombardo said University Housing and Dining Services, formerly known as Residential Life, has been hard to reach, and that she has heard the same from many other students. 

Charles Holmes-Hope, executive director of UHDS, declined to sit for an interview, instead deferring questions to UVM spokesperson Adam White. 

“Jeanne Mance sustained water and systems damage which will be repaired before students are moved back in,” White wrote in a March 6 email to the Cynic. “We do not have a timeline yet for the completion of this work.”

Approximately 100 students were relocated, White said in the email. 

“Those residential students relocated on-campus who moved to a higher tiered room were kept at the same rate that they were paying prior to their move,” White wrote. “If the student moved to a lower tiered room, they are charged the rate for that room.”

Holmes-Hope did not respond to an additional request for comment on the experiences of students who have complained of a lack of communication from his department. 

Sophomore Kaelin Healy, a former resident of Jeanne Mance, said students had to wait to go into the hall to retrieve their items, eventually being escorted in by firefighters.

“People were waiting for hours until they could get a response about what to do and where to go and stuff,” she said. “Thankfully, ResLife figured out placements for everyone.”

Healy said moving out of Jeanne Mance was a hassle. 

“We collected stuff for the night, and then we didn’t find out until maybe four days later if we could get the rest of our stuff or what was gonna happen,” she said.

Healy lives in Harris Hall now, which she said is a much better location for her than Jeanne Mance.  

“I used to have to plan out so much time to just walk to class,” she said. “[Harris] is much closer to Central Campus and stuff.”

However, some students are not as pleased with their new accommodations. Sophomore Max Baker-Gentry was moved into Ready Hall, one of the “Back Five” dorms on Trinity Campus. 

“It’s not awful when you’re comparing it to Jeanne Mance, but like I still got put into a triple so it’s an adjustment,” he said. “It’s caused me to fall behind in some classes.”

Baker-Gentry had a surprise when he moved into his new accommodations. 

“I was moved into a girls’ suite,” he said. “They contacted ResLife about moving us out because, you know, a bunch of guys they don’t know moved into their suite. Makes sense.” 

Baker-Gentry said he and his roommates reached out to UHDS to request a room transfer. They emailed a UHDS worker who offered them a room in the same building whose current inhabitants would be moving out in a week. 

The group accepted the offer and waited for the go-ahead email from UHDS, but never received a response. 

“I wait a week, nothing,” Baker-Gentry said. “I wait halfway into this week, nothing. Silence for like a week and a half.”

He said he then followed up on the status of their request, only to find out from UHDS that the worker they had been emailing, who was not even from that department, had taken the week off. 

“After telling us he’d get back to us [that] week, he decided to take that week off and not inform us,” Baker-Gentry said. “We are still waiting on the room transfer.”

Healy said clothes or personal items that had been damaged by the fire or doused by the sprinklers had been taken to be cleaned. However, affected students were not notified of this.

“They went to Jeanne Mance and found out their stuff was gone and didn’t know it was getting professionally cleaned,” she said. “They were just like, ‘where’s my stuff?’ and they had to go through a week without most of their clothes.”

Lombardo was one of those students. 

“If you were in the affected area, you got all your clothes yanked from you and your bed sheets, and they didn’t tell you,” she said. 

Jeanne Mance residents were informed by email on March 6 that their now-laundered belongings were ready for pickup, Lombardo announced at the gathering. The only remaining items to be returned were two leather jackets, one belonging to her, that had been sent to Canada to be cleaned, she said.

Even with the commotion of the move, some Jeanne Mance residents are disappointed to have left the hall. First-year Matthew Pagendarm said he misses his old digs. 

“Before the fire, I felt like I was the only person who actually enjoyed living in Jeanne Mance,” he said. “It’s really far away from everything, which for me, that just meant I got a bunch of exercise without having to go out and try to exercise.”

Pagendarm said there’s a close community in Jeanne Mance, as evidenced by the Thursday gathering. 

“It’s fairly small, but we ended up getting kind of tight-knit,” he said at the Thursday event. “Like, I have met and talked to everyone in this room.”

Pagendarm is now a resident in Central Campus Residence Hall, but said he has not enjoyed his stay thus far. 

“Everytime I tell people about it they’re like ‘oh, you got upgraded,’” he said. “I don’t like it. My neighbors are very loud.”

Nolan Crandall, program coordinator for the Gaming Collective, said the Thursday gathering was a collaboration between him and Lombardo, but that ResLife paid to provide pizza and refreshments for the students in attendance. 

“We haven’t met as a community since the fire happened,” he said. “We wanted to give students an opportunity for closure, communal grieving and some updates about where I’m going to be doing some programming and how they can access that.”

Though Jeanne Mance is inaccessible for at least the rest of the semester, the Gaming Collective will continue to hold events, Crandall said.

Lombardo capped off the meeting by inviting those in attendance to raise an nonexistent glass in memory of their residence hall. 

“Because we’re all out of Capri Suns, I want to do a final imaginary toast to Jeanne Mance,” she said to the room. “And, you know, just like a general hallelujah because we moved out.”