DuSable Hall is in “serious” trouble.

According to a Citation and Notification of Penalty packet assembled and issued by the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL), DuSable was cited for seven violations, all labeled “serious.”

“Serious means that there’s the potential for injury, serious injury or death,” said John Bastert, enforcement manager at the IDOL safety inspection and education division.

Public employees are made aware of the violations but are not obligated to make violations public to students.

In an email, Scott Mooberry, a safety officer for NIU’s environmental health and safety department, said citations are issued based on long-standing or potential hazards in a workplace.

When asked if students were in danger, Mooberry said departments throughout campus had “successfully partnered together” to amend the citations.

Listed among the violations were failures to ensure all emergency lights worked properly, label electrical outlets properly and label all “containers of unknown liquids, which may be hazardous.”

The citation booklet states NIU has until May 9 to correct all of the violations. Mooberry said the university is following “established protocols” to resolve the issues by the deadline.

Bastert said building violations like those found in DuSable are common among colleges.

“I can tell you this, there’s nobody from the IDOL that’s ever inspected NIU in the last eleven years,” Bastert said. “They only come up randomly, the way that we select them. They were this year, and that’s why we did the inspections.”

DeKalb building inspector Roger Votaw said the city has no inspection jurisdiction over the university.

“As far as dorms and stuff that the college itself owns, we don’t do it,” Votaw said. “We do the privately owned places. Any of the NIU buildings, we don’t even inspect those when they’re building them; that’s all handled through the state and I don’t know what they do as far as inspections.”

Bastert and Votaw said they did not know who is responsible for the regular building code inspections at NIU.

Mooberry said the university is committed to regular inspections.

“Safety and health inspectors from the IDOL inspect campus buildings on a weekly basis as part of a ‘pro-active’ regulatory inspection process IDOL initiated in July 2011,” Mooberry said.

Bastert said it has taken since then to get through all the buildings.

Mooberry said once the university is aware of a problem or citation, “an aggressive response to promptly abate any citations” is quickly initiated.

Although the university was cited for health and safety violations, potential fees for the infractions were listed as $0.

“We don’t issue monetary fees on the first issue of a citation; we do have the authority by statute to issues monetary penalties for subsequent violations,” Bastert said. “In other words, if we do a follow-up and they say they’ve been abated and they haven’t been, then that would most likely would result in a monetary penalty.”

Mooberry said other citations were issued in other buildings and the problems in those locations have since been repaired.