Big Fight for Petty Change

I might be a pretty busy student at times, and with the move to a college-owned theme house I figured life as a student would be easier in some ways. True.. and also false.

Now, the people I live with are great, and so is the house itself. The 50" plasma, table tennis, and ample space for studying and hanging out all make it worthwhile, despite the fact that the laundry facilities are.. well, expensive. Actually, as far as I know, the laundry in our house is way more expensive than in the rest of the theme houses (not to mention the other dorms). Laundry machines in our house charge a steep $1 per wash and $1 for drying, vs the $0.75 and $0.50 in other campus housing. If my math is correct, that means theme house residents have to pay 100% more than others for drying and 75% more for washing clothes, which you'd think would be basic, elementary services in a house that's a home to 12 students.


The math is even more frustrating when considering what a given student pays per academic year in laundry fees, given that we do laundry about twice a week. This adds up to about $184 ($2 twice a week for 46 weeks) per student (about $2,200 in profit is generated by our house for laundry alone), which is $69 more than any other student on campus (they're paying about $115). Now, factor in the higher cost of theme house living per year ($4512 vs $3856 for a single room), and it's easy to see how charging the theme house students more for laundry when they're already paying more just to live in a house simply isn't fair.

The college let us all have access through our door cards to other, cheaper laundry facilities in the dorms in the beginning, before they put the 'deluxe VIP crazy high-charge' laundry machines in the house, and then they revoked the option when that was done. In other words: stick it to the theme house students. The outrage for me is, when considering that I pay about $19,000 a year to study at Augie, that you'd think the $69 extra for laundry could've been skipped. Simply giving back the freedom to do laundry where ever we please, at the price level the masses already enjoy, would be enough of a sign of good will towards the students trying to make a difference through living in special, themed houses. Augie: stop squeezing the last dollars out of poor students unless you have to. You're rich enough.

Labels: College Stuff, Rants

posted by CK @ 19:18