ADA, Okla. -- Students at East Central University say they were left without heat in their dorm rooms for several days during our recent cold snap -- including one night when the mercury plunged to 5 degrees.
The students said they sent several maintenance requests, but after days of no repairs, two of the students said their room was so cold the window and their shower curtain were frozen.
Autumn Morris and Hayley Brooks shared their frustration on Facebook.
"We had called the physical plant, we called housing, and we were getting nowhere," Morris said.
When their post was shared more than 400 times, the girls realized they weren't the only ones shivering on the ECU campus.
The university staff said 19 dorm rooms were without heat, and a total of 60 phone calls for help were made on Tuesday. School officials said the problem was exacerbated by Monday's holiday.
"Being closed on Martin Luther King Day made it so we had a down day," explained Jessica Kilby, ECU's vice president of administration and finance. "If people did not contact their resident director or the resident assistant, our personnel did not know about those until they returned to work on Tuesday.
But Morris and Brooks said their initial requests weren't made until Monday night.
What caused the heat to go off?
"They were kind of sporadic," Kilby said. "Some were just equipment failures, some were just restarts of the equipment.
There's a university rule banning space heaters, so the students were forced to layer up as much as possible and tough it out. The school said the students had an option to move across campus, but with no vehicle -- and being after 9 p.m. -- Morris and Brooks elected to stay put.
"The coldest nights were when it first started and we said 'emergency,' but we got no response," Brooks said.
It wasn't until Wednesday evening that any maintenance was done, but the girls said it took their guardians getting involved to get any attention... and then the problem just got worse.
"It's a part of our contract to keep everything clean, so we thought, you know, at the very least the staff and employees would be held to that same standard," Brooks said.
The school's policy also requires maintenance workers to leave a note when they've entered a student's dorm room, but Morris and Brooks said they didn't get one.
ECU says they're down to only one heating and air conditioning technician, and they should have three on staff.
"He did not leave a note and he left a mess," Kilby conceded. "That was a failure on our part."
ECU said it will reimburse the cost of the girls' dorm room for the six nights that they were without heat.
ECU blamed a holiday staff shortage for failure to provide a fix.
"Being closed on Martin Luther King Day made it so we had a down day," explained Jessica Kilby, ECU's vice president of administration and finance. "If people did not contact their resident director or the resident assistant, our personnel did not know about those until they returned to work on Tuesday.
KTEN spoke to two ECU students on Friday who shared their concerns on Facebook. That post now has more than 400 shares.