After years of clogging bike rooms with their rusty frames and broken wheels, generations of abandoned bikes are being removed by the Office of Residential Life.
ResLife cleared out the bike rooms of five Wriston dormitories on Wednesday, moving all bikes left in the rooms to an off-campus storage facility. In all, 28 bikes were removed, said Thomas Forsberg, associate director of housing and residential life.
Forsberg said he expects to clear out all 32 dormitory bike rooms by the end of the semester. The removal of bikes from those spaces, which began Wednesday, came in response to student complaints about the clearly abandoned bikes taking up space in bike rooms across campus.
ResLife sent out an e-mail to all dorm residents on Monday notifying them that they would be removing all bikes left in bicycle rooms in Chapin, Diman, Goddard, Harkness and Marcy houses between the hours of 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesday. At least one bike owner left his bike in the room during the designated time and has since contacted ResLife about getting his bike back, Forsberg said.
All removed bikes will be labelled and photographed before being placed in off-campus storage. Once the bikes have been removed, students have 90 days to claim their bike before they will be declared "surplus," according to Forsberg.
The University is still deciding what to do with bikes that remain unclaimed after the waiting period. ResLife is considering donating them to charity or offering them to students, Forsberg said.
Some Wriston residents said the bike rooms were in need of clearing.
"There are a ton of bikes down there. You can tell a lot of them haven't been used in years," said Erik Maser '11, a resident of Olney House who keeps his bike locked to a staircase near his room. "There's no room down there."
Ben Mathews '11 complained about having to leave his bike exposed to rain outside because of the space crunch. "It's hard enough finding the space around Providence to ride a bike, let alone a place to put it," he said.
Maser expressed concern, though, that some students might not remember to remove their bikes before ResLife does. "I think a lot of people are going to get their bikes taken and they won't know what happened," he said.
Forsberg offered one piece of advice to students with bikes: "Watch for the e-mails," he said.
