Before winter break, Barlow said that he and his roommates had wedged their microwave in a closet between boxes and disguised the bundle with a coat. Still, Hegarty managed to find the microwave.

“Hegarty must have searched the closet, because he left us a fire safety slip alerting us to the violation,” said Barlow. “It was kind of a shock. When I lived in Old Leverett last year, we just put the microwave on someone’s bed and threw a sheet over it. It looked like a silhouetted microwave, yet it wasn’t confiscated.”

Hegarty said six microwaves had been found in students’ rooms in Mather House during the past week. Superintendents from other Houses could not be reached over the weekend.

Dingman said there is little students can do to win back appliances that were confiscated according to the rules.

“If students feel that there has been some error, they can raise the issue with the building manager,” Dingman said.

Hegarty said one student had already approached him with an appeal to regain possession of her microwave.

“I wanted to give the student a chance to fight for her microwave before we cart it off sometime this week,” Hegarty said.

For now, residents of the Leverett Towers who do not own a Harvard-approved “micro-fridge” must use the microwaves in the Dining Hall.

“It’s not worth walking across the street to warm something up because it’ll be cold by the time I get back,” Barlow said. “It would be different if we had mini-kitchens in the Towers.”

—Staff writer Elena Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.