Dirty Laundry

Residents of Wien may have spent a semester in a crumbling and barely adequate building that often doesn’t even have drinkable or non-brown water, but now, thanks to Columbia Housing, they’ll at least know when their pants are clean. A new laundry notification system, the latest student life enhancement, stands as yet another example of a unnecessary little program in a system that needs an excellent big one.

For $10,000, students will now be able to check the progress of their laundry online, which means they will be spared the intolerable effort of having to push the “B” button on their elevator more than once.

True, $10,000 is chump change for the Housing department, but surely this money could have been better invested in, say, providing pool cues and balls for the currently-useless tables in East Campus, Woodbridge, McBain, and Carman.

Even worse, Housing is spending $10,000 when it needs to be spending millions, trying to buy off students with a gimmicky program so that they will ignore the real, more expensive problems they face every day. Thankfully, most students aren’t going to be placated by inadequate measures like this.

Despite our complaints, we recognize that just providing guaranteed housing for thousands of students in the heart of New York City is an amazing feat. But, we deserve more than the bare, elevator-breaky minimum too frequently provided.

Granted, last semester Woodbridge’s residents would probably have been glad to check their laundry from their rooms, especially after they discovered that their elevators would no longer go down. However, it would have been better if the elevators hadn’t broken down in the first place, just as it would be better if people who left their rooms in McBain to get detergent didn’t have to worry about vandals destroying their hallway before they got back. The new laundry system is a Band-Aid for a patient who requires surgery.

Fixing an entire building is obviously difficult and time consuming, and Housing may feel that it is doing what it can when it can, but all the good intentions in the world won’t make the brown water in Wien any cleaner. Instead of wasting time and money on small-bore projects, Housing needs to turn its attention to massive renovations, and it needs to do so now.

We appreciate that Housing tries to make our lives better. If they really want to help, though, they need to get basics. And, while they’re at it, maybe check out that water problem.