Students with suite bathrooms are well aware of the dwindling ranks of Dorm Crew. The paucity of student employees means that Dorm Crew cannot keep pace with the prescribed two-week cleaning cycle. In fact, Harvard’s tradition of employing students to clean one another’s bathrooms is at risk. In response to declining student interest, Dorm Crew has already begun to turn over some of its cleaning duties for bathrooms in several Houses to UNICCO, the largest janitorial contractor in Boston.

Certainly the change will bring some benefits. UNICCO’s more frequent service will be a welcome improvement over Dorm Crew’s understandable but unpleasant lack of assiduity. Furthermore, UNICCO’s workers alert students in advance of their visits such that they can plan around them—generally not the case with Dorm Crew’s notoriously erratic schedule. Indeed, Dorm Crew should mimic their professional counterparts and establish in the various Houses timetables to which they can remain relatively faithful.

But while the general quality of students’ bathroom-cleaning service will likely rise, the transfer of this work from students to a contractor is regrettable. The student exodus from the Dorm Crew labor market is due to the decline in the job’s relative wage. Three years ago, with a starting hourly rate of $9.85, Dorm Crew stood out as one of the most generous employers on campus. When adjusted for inflation, today’s $10.15 an hour starting salary is significantly less attractive—only $9.47 an hour in 2000 dollars. In fact, $10 an hour has become standard fare in the Harvard student job market, even for more intellectually stimulating work. It is no surprise that students are more likely to turn down Dorm Crew today.

Dorm Crew should raise its pay in order to maintain a larger staff. The existence of a high-paying Dorm Crew provides interested students with an opportunity to earn money while getting exercise. And a sense of self-sufficiency is lost when we rely on the outside to do our dirty work.

What can potentially be most treacherous in this transition is that Harvard’s money, or more specifically a fraction of the students’ room fees, is lining UNICCO’s pockets. Part of Harvard’s expenses associated with the cleaning of bathrooms by the outside janitors ends up in the hands of UNICCO’s management—not Harvard student workers and captains. Moreover, UNICCO’s poor record in matters of wages and benefits has frequently incurred the ire of its workers and labor advocates, as evinced by last October’s widespread strikes.

Bathroom tiles will likely glisten more brightly if the task of maintaining student bathrooms’ lemony freshness is turned over to a private contractor, but the costs are far greater than the returns. The diminishing appeal of this wholesome work opportunity is a testament to Dorm Crew’s failure to satisfactorily raise wages. Eliminating that opportunity and transferring the man-hours to outside workers may seem to be an attractive solution, but it needlessly enriches the middle-man. Money that could go to students that ends up going down the drain.

Dissent: Not Just Work Study

It seems incongruous that The Staff, which has in the past given a strong endorsement of the Living Wage and the rights of Harvard’s support staff, is now perturbed that workers seem to be “encroaching” on students’ activities. The Staff’s calls for increasing wages for student dorm crew workers—basically subsidizing a “relaxation” from the “rigors” of being able to enjoy the world’s best undergraduate education—would deny giving this work to people for whom these jobs are not diversions, but livelihoods.

Dorm Crew is a rewarding and valuable contribution to the campus—for the students it employs and the students it serves—but the fact that it recognizes its limitations and plans ahead for them should be lauded, not condemned.

UNICCO’s presence will only enhance the service to students, and will help increase employment opportunities for those on our campus who don’t enjoy a multi-million dollar financial aid safety net.

—Lia C. Larson ’05, Ronaldo Rauseo-Ricupero ’04 and Margaret M. Rossman ’06