For 12 days, laundry services were unavailable to residents of Osprey Suites.
Courtesy of Aubrey Carr | The Crow’s Nest
By Aubrey Carr
Residents of USF St. Petersburg’s Osprey Suites were met with a distressing sign hanging from their laundry room door: Out of order.
Earlier this month, the residence hall’s laundry system was down for nearly two weeks, leaving Osprey Suites’ 375 residents unable to wash their clothes.
“It is ridiculous that I am spending this much money on housing to not have a working laundry machine,” said Zoe Gottschalk, a freshman education major. “[Housing & Residential Education] should have immediately had people here working on it.”
On Oct. 25, 12 days after issues began, Osprey’s washing machines were repaired.
However, malfunctioning washing machines have been a recurrence for USF St. Petersburg’s residence halls.
“This has been a frustrating situation and we have been working to resolve it,” said Susan Kimbrough, St. Petersburg director of Housing & Residential Education.
According to Kimbrough, the campus utilizes a third-party vendor for laundry services, CSC Service Works, and only its specialists can repair the machines.
Kimbrough cited the laundry room’s student ID card reader as the source of the problem.
“The machines will be running for free as we work to troubleshoot and permanently correct the issue with the card reader,” Kimbrough said in a statement to residents on Oct. 25.
Though free laundry was a treat for residents in need of clean clothing, some students remained angry at the situation.
“I think [free laundry] is a weak excuse to make up for a few weeks of negligence,” said Tyler Mudge, a freshman psychology major. “They should have made [the laundry] free when it broke.”
Austin Burt, a freshman biology major, voiced similar feelings toward the circumstances.
“[Housing & Residential Education] was only willing to take a hit to their finances after an amount of time in which I, and clearly a lot of others, feel is unreasonable,” Burt said.
Burt shared doubts that residents would even have an opportunity to take advantage of the free laundry services.
“Let’s see how long free laundry lasts because I guarantee that it is going to be less than the time it was broken for,” he said.
After less than 24 hours, the washing machines and dryers of Osprey Suites resumed normal pricing at $1.25 per cycle.
Osprey Suites is not the only residence hall facing maintenance issues. Students housed in Pelican Apartments (RHO) have also voiced concerns regarding laundry services.
“The washers rarely work and when they do it’s not correctly,” said Laura Shaw, a freshman political science major and resident of RHO. “None of the machines to use your [student] ID work, so you have to use quarters, but it’s not even worth it.”
In response to both Osprey and RHO’s laundry issues, Kimbrough said alerting housing of any problems is the quickest way to get machines fixed.
“If there is an issue with a machine or card reader, the best way to report it is to notify the housing office via the form on our website and we will notify CSC,” Kimbrough said.
Sounds like a mob operation. Kickbacks? Who really knows? Corporations and politicians have taken over the crime game and these poor kids have to live the stank life because of it, or so it would seem. I’m not making any claims, just asking questions.
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