Nothing in life is free--not even moving out of Harvard's dorms at the end of each academic year.

Although there are relatively few explicit costs for students who pack up and move home for the summer, the College pays a hefty price to get undergraduates out of their rooms and move alumni in.

Perhaps the most significant of these costs are those associated with Dorm Crew.

After all the boxes are packed and the furniture stored, a team of about 390 student workers tackle the accumulated grime of eight months of student occupation, according to Dorm Crew Director Robert Wolfreys.

Scrubbing bathroom floors, sweeping corners and vacuuming rugs, the workers earn a minimum of $8.85 per hour. One 40-hour week of work for those 390 employees costs the College's Houses and Yard operations a total of $138,060. Typically, however, those employees work significantly longer hours, racks up higher costs for Harvard in overtime wages.

But once the dorms have been given a peripheral cleaning, several different maintenance outlays address more specific problems in the rooms.

According to Kathleen A. Bray, director of Yard Operations, three maintenance teams--composed of carpenters, painters and shades repairers--tackle a "laundry list" of problems throughout the Yard residence halls.

Bray estimated that the carpenter team will cost between $8,000 and $10,000, the painters about $5,000 and the shades repairers between $2,000 and $3,000, bringing a total to about $16,000.

"Overall, that's not too bad," Bray said.