One of the key issues facing the Carleton student body is laundry services. In Cassat, clothing dryers simply do not do their job, leaving students’ laundry cold and damp after an hour-long cycle. All seven floors of Watson are restricted to using only four washing machines, three of which operate. And in Myers, students face a variety of difficulties that some residents have compared to the Hunger Games or, in some cases, “active combat”, according to Deter Gent, ’27. The four floors of Myers must fight to use the four washing machines on the first floor. At all times of the day, the incessant beeping of the laundry services touches off a battle between residents who wish to wash their laundry. First, students must encounter the several inches of standing grey water on the floor of the laundry room, hurtling through it like the steeplechase. Track runner Oxy Clean ’28, a third-floor resident, reported that he won his heat in the recent Carleton track meet after practicing doing his laundry in Myers. Next, students must play an impromptu game of roulette, each competitor praying that when they open each washing machine, they do not encounter one filled to the brim with water that has failed to drain.
For those who are lucky enough to find an open and empty laundry machine, they face another obstacle once their cycle has finished. Students must swiftly and carefully transfer their laundry across the moat of grey sludge on the laundry room floor to the drying machines on the opposite wall. Myers dryers omit a jarring sound that is a combination of banging, smashing, and grinding, and some residents, like second floor resident Dryer Sheets ’27, fear that the dryer will “explode and ignite all of Myers”.
When students open the dryers, their clothing, usually still damp after an hour on the highest possible temperature setting, plummets to the ground, soaking up the greyish sludge that has accumulated on the laundry room floor. Some students have attempted to solve this issue by placing singular paper towels on the floor.
It is expected that tensions between Myers residents over laundry services are high. On the laundry room bulletin board is a piece of paper scrawled with “give me back my pants”. As such, last week, when a Myers resident monopolized all four washing machines for two cycles, angering their neighbor, who also sought to wash their laundry, dozens of Myers residents congregated in the laundry room, banging on washing and drying machines, chanting “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”. Luckily, campus security intervened before the fight took place. “It was the craziest thing that’s happened in Myers since that girl kept walking into the mens’ room,” reported first-year and third Myers resident Tyde Podd ’25, referencing the span of several weeks in fall term in which a first-year girl repeatedly walked into the mens’ bathroom on the third floor, mistakenly believing it to be the kitchen.
Laundry services across campus are stretched thin, especially in Myers. As the weather gets warmer and students commence their spring cleaning, some fear for their lives while attempting to do their laundry due to the war-like obstacles they must face.
