“You go into college, and it’s kind of a known thing that doing your laundry is going to be annoying,” said Abigayle Page, a second-year student living in the Cowell Apartments. “But I don’t think there should be that worry of your clothes being burnt.”
Page recalled an experience with a faulty dryer in the Cowell Apartments that left many of her clothing items “scorched, burnt through, melted almost.” She held up a white jacket she had brought with her from the load, revealing a charred, dime-sized hole on one of the sleeves.
“I started sobbing because it probably burnt through $200 worth of clothes.”
Based on City on a Hill Press reporting, burn marks from dryers are not uncommon. These photos are courtesy of Page, which pictures other damaged clothing items as a result of that load.
Page’s sentiments are echoed by many campus residents who have grown increasingly wary of the laundry machines at UC Santa Cruz. Safety concerns arose following an electrical fire on April 21 caused by a dryer’s motherboard in the Rachel Carson College (RCC) DL Building. A student called 911 as the smell of smoke permeated the entire first floor.
“I know a couple of people in the building who said that in the hour preceding the fire alarms going off, they smelled stuff coming from the laundry room, but just assumed it was business as usual because the washers and dryers act weirdly all the time,” said Amelia Totten, a first-year biomolecular engineering major who evacuated the DL Building during the fire.
Campus fire marshals arrived on scene shortly after the 911 call.
“We responded once contacted to determine the cause of the malfunction that created the smoke and minor char to the circuit board,” wrote Nicholas Otis, lead designated campus fire marshal, in an email to City on a Hill Press.
Later that same day, residents received an email from the RCC Housing Office announcing that, after the fire marshals’ assessment, the laundry room was safe for use, with the exception of the dryer that caught fire — the one closest to the window.
“Since this incident occurred, one of the things that housing has done is install a ventilated fan,” said Mari Ortiz-McGuire, associate director for college student life. “There was ventilation in the laundry room, but they added a fan to that and they’re going to be adding fans to all of the laundry rooms.”
Despite the proposed solution, students remain skeptical of the timeliness in addressing what they’ve deemed as an ongoing problem.
“People were complaining about that dryer putting holes in all their clothes and leaving scorch marks on them weeks before the fire,” said Georgia Eyerman, a first-year environmental science and agroecology major whose clothes were in a neighboring dryer when the incident occurred. “They only took care of it because the fire department was called.”
Who Really Owns the Laundry Machines?
The Speed Queen commercial washers and dryers are supplied by the company CSC ServiceWorks, who entered into a Purchase Agreement with UCSC on June 30, 2017. The initial contract term was for seven years and is set to end for the upcoming 2025-2026 academic year.
“CSC was the successful bidder in an open and competitive Request for Proposal Process (RFP) offering the lowest price,” wrote Erin Elliott, communications director for student success and campus climate, in an email to City on a Hill Press. “UCSC does not pay the vendor. CSC derives their revenue from the fees for laundry services paid by users of the equipment.”
In the Purchase Agreement obtained by City on a Hill Press, it’s revealed that UCSC receives a majority of the total revenue generated from the laundry service fees. Additionally, UCSC is not found liable for any “incidental or consequential damages” from the services that CSC supplies.
“We do get students who come in and share their concerns about the machines,” Ortiz-Mcguire said. “We redirect them pretty consistently to the signage that’s in the laundry rooms provided to us by CSC.”
At UCSC, CSC maintains 275 washers, 278 dryers and 48 washer/dryer combos dispersed among every residential building on campus.
In addition to both quarterly and annual maintenance, CSC is also responsible for reimbursing students whose clothing has been damaged by laundry equipment. While CSC is supposed to respond within 10 business days, according to some campus residents, reimbursements from CSC for damaged personal items are few and far between, with payment glitches being common.
“[CSC] only lets you submit one refund request at a time, even though I had maybe three or four charges that I needed refunded,” Amelia Totten said. “I don’t think I ever got an email back from them with a refund or anything like that because why would they? They probably get so many complaints about it anyways, they just ignore it.”
When Laundry Becomes More Than a Chore
Housing administrators instruct students to follow directions from the signage posted in the laundry rooms in order for CSC to process their requests. Without the exact details of a student’s transaction, housing administrators like Ortiz-McGuire find it difficult to assist with refund requests.
“This is an ongoing concern, of course. How to communicate this information of the different systems to students is an ongoing challenge,” Ortiz-McGuire said. “We’ve talked about signage and blindness to signage and flyers and so it’s an ongoing battle, and we continue every year to talk about how to best communicate the details of all of this to our students and the importance of timeliness in reporting.”
“When you want to get a refund for anything, any company is going to want to know the date, time, amount, and if the customer doesn’t provide those details, it’s probably not going to happen,” she continued.
Due to the consistent unreliability of the machines on campus, students are constantly having to resort to alternative solutions, such as hauling their laundry loads to a different building’s laundry room.
“There’s eight different houses in Stevenson. The Upper Quad has their own laundry room, and that one just broke — like stopped working — [with] only one washer and one dryer working out of the 30 that are in there,” said Isabella Duarte, a first-year politics major living in Stevenson. “So everyone had to walk down to the Lower Quad [to do their laundry], which isn’t that far, but we shouldn’t have to be doing that.”
CSC maintenance workers repaired the Upper Quad’s broken machines within the week, re-opening the laundry room for use. However, students like Duarte are still proceeding with caution.
“I think I’ve seen people still use it, so I’m sure it’s working now,” Duarte said. “I just haven’t even tried because I gave up [using that room].”
Duarte is not alone in her surrender to the exhaustion of battling the on-campus laundry machines. Abigayle Page knows she has no other choice but to use them, and has felt disregarded by UCSC relinquishing accountability for laundry services.
“There’s no other way to wash your clothes,” Page said. “There’s really no other option, and I wish they’d be more responsive and upfront about just how terrible these washing machines are.”
Additional reporting by Bomi Choe.
