Mold remediation

Oberlin College owned and maintained the buildings OSCA lived in. Under the lease, OSCA wasn't even permitted to perform its own building maintenance — we carried the health consequences of the buildings without the right to touch them.

Members had been raising mold complaints for years: informal reports, photo evidence passed down between cohorts, and a known precedent in the Fairchild dorm litigation. None of it had moved anyone. Each new complaint read to the College as one more round of the same students being unhappy.

The question wasn't whether the problem was real. It was: how do you force an institution to act on something it has no immediate incentive to fix, when you hold no formal leverage over it — no enforcement power, no alternative supplier, no credible exit?

I stopped repeating complaints and started building an evidentiary record. I set up standing weekly meetings with Facilities and tracked every work order — what was reported, when, what was done, what recurred. Within a couple of months the conversation was no longer anecdote versus anecdote; it was a dated paper trail the College itself had co-signed.

I brought in an independent professional inspector rather than relying on our own account. This was the pivotal move. I commissioned licensed mold screening inspections and walked the inspector through the spaces personally, attaching the generational history to each room — which complaints came from which years, what had been patched and what had come back. It converted the situation from "students are upset" into "a licensed third party confirms a violation of the lease."

I published the report to membership instead of handling it quietly. Releasing the findings openly was a choice, not a courtesy. It meant the College was now responding to a documented finding in front of an informed membership — transparency functioning as the leverage we didn't otherwise have.

The College formally acknowledged the lease violation and contracted professional remediation of the affected buildings.

The documents below are the record that moved the institution — the independent screening, the notice of violation, and the itemized list used in notification.

• Mold screening inspections, Sept. 25 2022

  Licensed third-party inspection report for OSCA buildings.

  Open document (PDF) →

• Lease violation notice, October 2022

  Formal notice citing the lease terms breached.

  Open document (PDF) →

• List of violations for notification

  Itemized findings compiled for the College and membership.

  Open document (PDF) →

Documentation plus a credible third party can move an institution that has no formal obligation to listen.

Nothing about the underlying facts changed between the years of ignored complaints and the month the College agreed to pay. What changed was the form the facts arrived in.