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Harvard College students will pay an extra 25 cents per load of laundry this semester, at $1.75 a cycle. The price increase comes as the College replaced Crimson Cash laundry payment — operated through students’ Harvard IDs — with a mobile app.

- The Harvard Crimson, September 4, 2025

I wake up in the morning in a cold sweat. Good — that means I can do some more laundry. I sprint downstairs with my pajamas in tow and stuff it all into the machine. Slowly, reverently, I open the One Tap Away app and thank my lucky stars I have the privilege of stocking the coffers of the university I hold so dear.

25 cents down. $2.7 billion to go.

Are you one of those Debbie Downers who claims there’s no way out but to settle, that there is no such thing as “fighting” unless by fighting you mean “showing up at the Supreme Court and losing,” that if we refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration we will simply run out of money and have to write on our hands because notebooks are too expensive? Well, stop claiming that!

I’ve found the solution — and it was in the Pforzheimer basement all along. There’s no need to settle if we all just do a ton of laundry.

Feel that? That itchy, sort of creeping feeling? That’s school spirit, coursing through your veins. (Also how a sweater feels if you wash it seven times within one Monday.) I know it’s new. I know you’ve never felt it before. But it’s here to stay.

Take it from me. Back in the day, I scrimped and complained that I had to pay $1.50 for clean clothes when I was already paying $87,000 annually to this for-now-accredited university. Now? I wash my lights and darks separately, plus a cycle for the sheets and towels too. I stick in my pleated skirt even though it’s dry-clean only. I squirt ketchup onto everything I own at 2 PM sharp so I can run it back.

Get serious, people. It’s this or they start making us call first-years “freshmen” again.

Did your course assistant pay get docked? Be proud of your diminished Grensday budget. You are a walking, talking beacon of Liberty, Academic Freedom, and The American Way. Has your New York Times school subscription mysteriously disappeared? You can subsist on Indy back copies out of the trash can until we win this fight.

Victory begins on the home front, people! Reduce: showers (hot water is expensive), yogurt fat content and saying loudly progressive things that could get us all in trouble. Reuse: tissues, your friend’s p-set, jokes you have made in previous satire columns. Recycle: nothing; recycling is lib which is bad for our PR. Flush the up way, even though it is confusing that that would be the direction which uses less water.

Stop complaining about Harvard University Dining Services and start growing your own food in the flowerpot the Phillips Brooks House Association gave you. Do as I do, and run around campus crossing out DEI mentions of marginalized identities and replacing them with the word “Jew,” for safety. Every time you click on the Intellectual Vitality newsletter, our FIRE ranking moves up a spot. We are all in this together.

It is far too early to throw in the towel just because we can no longer perform the key function of a research university. We literally just won a court case with Judge Allison freaking Burroughs! Who would have seen that coming?! Who knows what could be next?? Maybe they’ll even return the money like she said!

And I’m proud to be a Harvardian, at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the liberal judges of the First Massachusetts District Court who temporarily gave that right to me. And I’ll gladly stand up next to you, and contribute every extra quarter I’ve got to stanch the bleeding.

Yona T. Sperling-Milner ‘27, an Associate Editorial Editor in Pforzheimer House, has switched her concentration from Social Studies to Applied Mathematics to help Harvard look more legitimate. E minus MC squared, am I right?