The Marquette Tribune campus news since 1916
Volume 109, Number 20
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
www.marquettewire.org
Staff recounts flooding in Johnston Hall The building has been undergoing repairs for weeks By Lance Schulteis
lance.schulteis@marquette.edu
A
fter a weekend stamped by a building-wide flood, Johnston Hall closed from Feb. 2 to Feb. 6, canceling in-person classes. The following week, the building reopened — though with a few new additions since students last walked the hallways. Fans set to maximum amps sit as fixtures on
flooding. The first step was to locate the source and stop the leak, but Jahner said the task proved harder than just following the water trail. Water poured from the ceiling near two stairwells on opposite sides of the building. Unlike most newer buildings where water will level in a single location, Jahner said, the floors in 118-year-old Johnston Hall aren’t perfectly even, causing water to pool in more than one spot. With more standing water on each ascending floor, the fifth floor became the focus. Facilities services then narrowed its search to the
Johnston Hall attic, which is only accessible through a fifth-floor crawl space and has a catwalk-like layout, Jahner said. However, even after checking the attic, the team was still unable to locate the leak. Jahner was not on campus, instead lending his expertise after being sent photos and videos. Still, the source of the leak wasn’t found. “The pictures I was getting, it wasn’t making sense,” Jahner said. So, Jahner went to Johnston Hall to investigate in-person. 5:30 p.m. With water still pouring
down, Kati Berg, acting dean of the College of Communication, first received word of the flood from faculty over text. Berg was out of town at her daughter’s basketball tournament and didn’t have her computer on hand, so she had to manage the flood response on her cell phone. “We had just sat down to have dinner with the team,” Berg said. “And then I got videos of the water coming through faculty offices.” Berg got to work, calling faculty with offices on the fifth floor where the water was at its deepest. Among them was Larry Zhiming Xu, an assistant professor in the College of Communication who works out of Room 530 — right next to the still-unknown source of the flood. Water destroyed the drywall in his office, pouring out of the ceiling like a showerhead and creeping through walls before trickling to the floor. Xu said faculty in the college often joke about him being a minimalist, which ultimately worked in his favor. “In this case, it helps,” Xu said. “If you don’t have much stuff in your office, nothing can be destroyed.” 6:30 p.m. Once Jahner decided to check on Johnston Hall in-person, facilities services finally put a stop to the waterfall, though not in the way it initially wanted. “We ended up just shutting the water off in the building,” Jahner said. “Generally, we try to avoid doing that only because we don’t want to shut the heat off for the building, too. Once you shut the water off, you lose heat.” With the water shut off, the team finally located the culprit of the leak: a halfinch split in a copper pipe that was ¾ of an inch thick. The pipe was tucked away in a corner of the attic, frozen by the January air. Not only was the pipe obscured from view, but it was also hidden from the building plans. The pipe, Jahner said, was a domestic water line that was no longer in use. “We didn’t even know it was there,” Jahner said. With the source of the leak shut off, the flood
Index
News
Sports
Arts & Entertainment
Students can study the topics of real estate and business analytics.
Marquette alum speed skater faces China on Tuesday.
The Gold 'n Blues and The Naturals did not advance to the semifinals.
Photos by Lance Schulteis lance.schulteis@marquette.edu
Fans are set to the highest setting to aleviate lingering moisture.
the floor, whirring in the background of lectures. Ceilings look like checkerboards with over 100 missing tiles, revealing the vents and pipes above. Contractors roam the building while continuing to fix the damage on floors above. Here’s everything that happened since the flooding first started. Saturday, Jan. 31 4:30 p.m. Mike Jahner, director of facilities management, said his team was notified of a flood by the Marquette University Police Department. 5 p.m. Facilities staff arrived at Johnston Hall to assess the
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SPORTS.......................................................5 OPINIONS..................................................9 FUN & GAMES.......................................10 A&E.................................................................11
New minors added to College of Business PAGE 2
Photo by Lance Schulteis lance.schulteis@marquette.edu
Larry Zhiming Xu's office suffered water damage from the flood.
assessment began. The facilities services team opened the doors to every classroom and office in the building, wading through water that covered their feet to determine the extent of the damage. Water pooled on every floor, ceiling tiles caved in under their own weight and crashed to the ground and offices — including Xu’s — had fallen into disrepair. With the flood stopped and standing water left in its wake, facilities services rushed to get the water cleaned up as quickly as possible. However,
Marquette did it with the help of a contractor, which was already on campus to repair a broken pipe in the Alumni Memorial Union. Due to the age of the building, most of the walls in Johnston Hall are made of plaster rather than drywall. As a result, the fans were positioned to dry out the water that would have otherwise stayed in the wall. Jahner said baseboards were pulled off of the walls and fans were blown upwards to dry the plaster. The following morning, the contractor brought a
See FLOODING page 3
Photo by Lance Schulteis lance.schulteis@marquette.edu
The flood caused damage to ceiling tiles, which fell to the floor.
Lehman, Team USA advance to semifinals PAGE 5
MU a cappella groups compete in ICCA PAGE 11