When I was a freshman and moved into the dorms, my roommate, my suite mate, and I saw that our bathroom was totally ICK. Stained walls with mold in some corners. So gross. The sliding glass door on the shower was also wobbly on its track.
The res life materials said we should not attempt repairs on our own.
As we were just naive, bright eyed freshman, we went to the front desk in our dorm to request the bathroom be painted and the sliding door be fixed. Our request fell on deaf ears. We called a few times to follow-up. Nothing.
Shortly thereafter, as I was getting out out of the shower, the sliding glass door crashed in on me. I was SO lucky the glass did not break. I was trapped though in the very small bathroom because of the way the door landed. I eventually had to kind of vault over the door using the towel rack to help me pull myself. It was awful.
We called to complain and, get this, they said they would not fix the shower door because it would just "break again".
OMGWTFBBQBYOB!
Then we went out to the hardware store and bought some tools and mildew resistant primer and paint. Hell yes we attempted repair ourselves even though we weren't supposed to. We straigtened out the track on the sliding door and sanded off the mildew then painted. The work didn't quite match in color and looked patchwork, but at least it was CLEAN.
Interestingly enough, some maintanace guys had to come into our bathroom a few months later to check things out because of a leak upstairs. They asked about the paint job and we explained the whole situation. They were pretty shocked at the administration's response with regard to the door and that they hadn't painted (or even sent anyone to look). Within a week, our entire bathroom had been repainted and they had looked at the sliding door (which we had repaired well as it turned out). Even if the dorm administration sucked, the maintenance guys rocked!