Free laundry is not nearly enough

About two weeks ago, Forest Quad’s water shut off.

Again.

It was completely unplanned. The water tank for the dorm is directly beneath the construction of the new food court. The outage was linked back to the work going on there.

It meant Forest’s Center Desk had to scramble to purchase what looked like 8 million bottles of water that residents, including yours truly, had to use for about a week.

It was the final straw for a lot of the students living in the dorm. My friend was put in charge of a petition to really push for lower dorm costs. Students began seriously talking to their RAs.

At multiple points, we were deterred. We were told we wouldn’t be listened to. We were told to try and petition, the dorms love hearing feedback, but we shouldn’t expect anything.

Today I received an email thanking Forest residents for their patience. It congratulated us for our successful petition. It told us what we won.

To make up for the shoddy construction schedule and multiple power and water outages, we all get free laundry this weekend.

Just one weekend.

So we all, or at least those of us who do our laundry in the dorms and not at a friends house, save $4.

Whoopie. I can almost get a Subway sandwich.

I understand maintaining a dorm is no easy task, so maintaining the residence halls not to mention the multiple Residential Programs and Services’ apartments, is practically herculean.

I understand RPS and Forest believe this is a compromise, that this makes up for the year-long delays and inconveniences these construction projects have caused.

But to me it smacks of dismissal.

My friend has suffered multiple infections due to the mold in the building.

My floor-mate was woken up three hours early before a final because the workers started at 7:30 a.m.

We had dirty water for a week. The toilets have stopped working multiple times.

And the one time we ask RPS for something reasonable, to lower the dorm costs for having to live in the middle of a heavy construction zone, we get the smallest crumb they can offer.

It feels as though we’ve been turned aside, that the living conditions of the building’s residents are not priority.

Not only that, our living conditions are not even relatively close to making the list of what could possibly be a potential priority.

In short, more needs to be done. I’ll sit with my almost Subway sandwich for now, but I think RPS needs to listen to the students.

They need to demonstrate we are a voice on this campus, because we are. A powerful one at that.

­— ewenning@indiana.edu