For the past several weeks students living on campus have been dealing with problems with washing their clothes. The washing machines began breaking down one by one toward the end of the Fall 2013 semester. Students living on campus continue in their struggle to wash their clothes because of the lack of working washers.
“In Cross Hall, there are about four washers working out of ten total,” senior Secondary English Education major Audrey Aguayo said. “I’m the current RA for the fourth floor, and many of my residents have been complaining about this taking so long.”
Cross Hall residents are not the only ones who are dealing with these types of problems.
“In Jones Hall, there are four washers working out of eight in the first floor. In the fifth floor, only one isn’t working out of eight,” Alexys Romero, a freshman Mechanical Engineering major, said.
It has been inconvenient for most students living in the dorms.
“Students are paying for this tuition and having the problem with washing clothes is ridiculous,” Jesus Beltran, an RA and junior Nursing Major, said.
The ongoing problem with the washers has led students to arrange time where no one is doing their laundry to get their laundry done. Students agreed that the best time to do laundry is late at night or early in the morning. Another choice is doing laundry during the week when everyone is in class. Several students have also been going to other dorms in order to wash their clothes during their most convenient time.
“I do laundry after midnight because of this problem,” sophomore Criminal Justice major Randy Favela said. “It takes time from my sleep and my studies. Residential Living should try and get this fixed very soon.”
Whenever a washer breaks down, an RA will fill out a work order for the washer to be fixed. The hall coordinator is in charge of sending this to Residential Living to get it fixed. Residential Living then contacts the service provider who is in charge of getting this fixed.
On Feb. 11, students living on campus received an email from the senior director of Residential Living, Jon Behrens, explaining why it has taken so long for washers to get fixed.
“I have been in contact with Mac Gray, our service provider, since November related to the lack of maintenance on our machines,” Behrens said. “We received a new service man in the fall and was unable to provide the level of service we expect. There has been a temporary service man on site three days over the past two weeks who was able to repair a significant number of machines.”
For the trouble this has been causing, students living on campus will be able to use their Buff IDs to do laundry in any of the other halls on campus until this gets resolved. Going into Centennial or Founders Hall could be a temporary solution to wash clothes since these halls have not had a problem with this.
“It used to take about two weeks for the washers to get fixed,” junior International Business major Christina Lehman said. “Now it has taken over two months and the washers are still damaged.”
Students who live in the halls have their own ideas on how the university should deal with this ongoing washing machine problem.
“I think we just need new washers that can handle more loads,” Lehman said. “Several students have never washed their clothes on their own so they don’t know how much clothes to put in these washers.”
