When Autumn Hester arrived at Howard University in August, moving into a campus quadrangle named after Harriet Tubman, she was convinced she had arrived at “the mecca, the place of greatness,” she said.
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She had heard stories about the elite, historically Black university in the nation’s capital — from its emerald Yard to its high-profile alumni such as Vice President Harris.
But the reality has been less impressive, said Hester, a freshman psychology major. The air conditioning in her Wheatley Hall dorm room was not functioning during the hottest days of the semester, she said, and at one point the room’s temperature reached 92 degrees.
“Then we started noticing that there was mold in our rooms,” Hester said. Symptoms followed: coughing, watery eyes and a sore and itchy throat. Multiple coronavirus tests came back negative.
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Housing stories like Hester’s, along with reports of mice, flooding and crumbling ceilings, helped spark a student-led protest on campus that is approaching its fifth week. More than 100 Howard students are occupying the Blackburn University Center, according to protesters, and dozens more are living in tents outside. They are calling on administrators to improve housing conditions and increase transparency as well as restore student, alumni and faculty representation on the university’s board of trustees.
While Howard students have a long history of protesting the administration — groups recently waged demonstrations in 2015 and 2018 over financial aid, housing issues, unreliable WiFi and a host of other issues — the length and high visibility of this fall’s protest have spawned tense conversations about accountability at one of the nation’s largest HBCUs.
From 2018: ‘We’re not budging.’ Howard students continue occupying administration building.
Since students launched their protest Oct. 12, they have gained high-profile attention and support, including from civil rights activists such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who visited the campus to help mediate, and politicians such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who have urged them on.
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The uproar “is the result of a long history of this administration’s neglect for our students’ education, safety and general well-being,” said Cyrus Hampton, a Howard graduate and master instructor in the university’s English department. “Howard University is facing a crisis of accountability.”
More than 4,300 people now have signed on to a petition that calls on the university to sever ties with Corvias, the Rhode Island-based development company that manages 60 percent of the campus’s housing. And one student has named Corvias and Howard in a class-action lawsuit that alleges both parties “failed to resolve” a “widespread mold problem.”
Many universities contract out core services to private companies that, unlike their campuses, have the capital to fund construction and other major projects. But the facilities issues at Howard are heightening the scrutiny on such relationships.
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Howard “needed housing, and it was not in a financial position to be able to do address that without a financial partner,” said Kevin McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington who studies privatization. “Howard’s solution is also potentially the source of its problem.”
A 40-year partnership
Howard’s relationship with Corvias began during the 2015-2016 academic year, when the company became responsible for “financing, renovating, managing, operating, and maintaining” four of the university’s residence halls: Howard Plaza Towers East and West, Charles R. Drew Hall, and George W. Cook Hall — at the time a total of 2,275 beds — a document about the deal shows.
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Corvias raised $144 million from investors to fund the project at Howard, financing $39.5 million for development work and defeasing the university’s outstanding debt — allowing “Howard to balance its goals to improve credit challenges, keep the debt of the capital raise off its balance sheet, and ensure the partnership was bankruptcy remote from the university,” Corvias said at the time.
Under the 40-year partnership, Howard pledged “all revenues from these properties” to a subsidiary of Corvias Group, according to financial information from the university.
Such deals are attractive to entities like universities because they offer an alternative to the traditional way of raising money for projects, said Jeremy Mohler, communications director for In the Public Interest, a think tank that studies issues related to privatization.
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“We’ve been in a climate of austerity for quite some time in the U.S., where state and local governments, including universities and other institutions, have had a lack of revenue and a lack of financing to build the infrastructure that they need,” Mohler said. “Public institutions and private institutions like universities turn to the private sector to borrow money.”
Howard University president acknowledges housing issues in address to community
But the interests of students and the interests of a private company can clash, Mohler added.
“They’re accountable to their shareholders. They’re accountable to their investors. They’re not accountable to the students at Howard University,” he said. “That incentivizes them to cut corners.”
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It is unclear exactly how much control Corvias has over the issues that arise within residence halls. Such terms are likely outlined in its contract with Howard, which declined to provide a copy of that document.
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But institutions in these deals typically release “a significant amount of control in order for the private partner to agree to do the deal,” said McClure of North Carolina.
“And the private partner is, in turn, expecting a deal with favorable terms to make sure they can pay off the debt,” he said. “You do have, to some extent, conflicting cultural expectations when you have a for-profit entity that is providing services in a nonprofit organization.”
Howard President Wayne A.I. Frederick said in his state of the university address Friday that the school will be watching over its partners.
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“While we have housing partners that are responsible for this, ultimately, they are housing Howard students, and so we don’t just simply pass that on to them,” Frederick said. “While we have a contract, we are always going to be riding herd with them to make sure they are doing what we expect them to do.”
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Mounting allegations
Corvias has been embroiled in scandal in recent years for its management of facilities elsewhere, including military bases in Louisiana, Maryland and North Carolina.
In December 2018, a Reuters investigation revealed that Corvias stood to earn $1 billion as military families battled flooding, crumbling infrastructure, plumbing problems and mold. Months later, Howard announced it had expanded its relationship with the company to include another building — bringing the number of beds in Corvias’s portfolio at the university to more than 3,000.
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Howard officials declined to say whether they knew about the military housing issues when the university expanded the deal in 2019. Corvias declined to comment on the allegations, which are the subject of lawsuits filed by military families at Maryland’s Fort Meade and North Carolina’s Fort Bragg.
Military families decry 'outrageous’ mold-infested housing at Fort Meade
Kaedriana Turenne, a Howard freshman, lobbed similar claims at Corvias in her lawsuit filed in late October, claiming it did not to provide safe and clean housing in Baldwin Hall, located in the same complex as Hester’s dorm. Turenne said she was admitted to the emergency room for symptoms that a doctor said “were consistent with mold exposure,” documents show.
Mold has been reported in 41 of the university’s 2,700 rooms, Frederick said Friday.
“I decided to file the class-action suit because myself and a bunch of other students were completely fed up with the school’s lack of accountability and lack of actions,” Turenne said in a statement. “No matter how many times we’ve brought the mold and unsafe living conditions to the school’s attention, we’ve proceeded to be gaslit and brushed off as if it wasn’t a big deal.”
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Howard declined to comment, citing the active litigation. Corvias also declined to comment on the suit. In response to questions about the allegations from Howard students, Corvias spokesperson Mary Humphreys said the school’s “students, families and community deserve the very best.”
Corvias “is committed to ensuring the housing it manages is safe and comfortable for students,” Humphreys said. “We inspect all rooms on a monthly basis and any identified maintenance needs are addressed.”
Mold issues are not unique to private housing, and university-managed housing is susceptible to the same issues. But schools locked into private contracts cannot always respond in the same fashion as schools without those obligations, experts said.
“It can be the case that institutions don’t have much flexibility to act,” McClure said.
Packed dorms are risky. A student housing company still pressured colleges to not limit capacity.
As the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to scale back, particularly in campus housing where contractors rely on a steady stream of revenue, many of these partnerships were strained, McClure said.
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In August 2020, Corvias faced backlash after documents revealed its leaders suggested to the University System of Georgia that restricting the number of students per dorm room would not curb the spread of the coronavirus. The company instead suggested schools limit occupancy in public areas such as elevators or lounges.
Corvias sent a similar message to another of its partners, Wayne State University in Detroit, Inside Higher Ed reported.
The revelations attracted the scrutiny of Sen. Warren and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who, in a joint letter to Corvias’s founder chief executive John Picerne, said the company’s actions “raise serious questions about the nature of these partnerships and the private sector influences affecting campuses as they make important public health decisions for the fall.”
Officials with the University System of Georgia and Wayne State said Corvias’s recommendations had no bearing on their decisions to hold in-person instruction, The Washington Post reported.
‘Our students are sleeping on the concrete’
A row of sleeping bags hung on a clothesline outside Howard’s Blackburn Center on Friday afternoon, now a routine for the protesters after a rainstorm. A student tossed a packet of handwarmers, which are now a staple since Washington’s overnight temperatures have dropped into the 30s and 40s, into her tent.
“Our students are sleeping on the concrete,” said Anthony Jackson, an alumnus and lecturer in the sociology department. But Jackson rejected the idea that the scene had damaged the school’s reputation.
He’s proud, even.
“Our students are hope personified,” he said.
Howard alumni Jam Shakwi and Stephen Jackson traveled from New York this past week to advise students and keep watch over the encampment. They even pitched tents of their own.
“We want to support the students, to get justice from an unjust administration,” said Jackson, who graduated in 1986.
In a letter to the community Tuesday, Frederick said he supported “peaceful protest” but denounced the continued occupation of the student center, which houses the campus’s largest cafeteria. The university closed the dining space as a result, and Frederick said Sodexo — the company Howard contracts for dining services — has started to lay off employees.
Student protesters have outlined four core demands: an in-person town hall with Frederick and other officials; the permanent reinstatement of student, alumni and faculty affiliate positions that are being removed from the school’s board of trustees; a meeting with university leaders about housing; and legal, disciplinary and academic immunity for protesters. Students say they plan to remain at the site until those demands are met.
Howard president says two-week occupation of student center ‘must end’
The university’s board of trustees last week invited two students, a professor and alumnus to serve as voting members on specific committees, an idea that was discussed over the summer when officials shared plans to remove the affiliate positions. The move is not what students are demanding but, according to university officials, is an effort to understand all perspectives on campus.
Frederick last month agreed to address housing plans with students and committed last week to “engaging with a broader group of student leaders to hear their concerns and to inform them of what our team is doing to address their concerns.” He answered questions about the protest during a small question-and-answer session on Friday and has said he is willing to sit down with protesters when they vacate the protest site.
Meanwhile, university officials said they have been busy resolving students’ concerns — deploying additional staff into residence halls to investigate unreported issues, replace HVAC equipment and perform deep cleanings and other services. Howard spokesperson Frank Tramble said the school brought additional vendors to campus to “supplement Corvias’ maintenance team.”
“The Howard University team and its partners continue to go above and beyond to proactively address facilities concerns,” Frederick said Tuesday. “Many students who live in the residence halls can attest to this.”
But some say those efforts come too late. One Howard sophomore, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the school, said he sought medical treatment for an acute sore throat. He had reported the mold issue in his Plaza Towers West dorm room, he said, but when maintenance crews came to check it out, “they said there was nothing in my vent.”
In the end, he said, “I had to clear out the mold myself.”
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