Laundry rates at campus facilities have decreased by $0.75 per load
Doing laundry on Ohio University’s campus now costs almost $1 less than it used to.
Residential Housing has cut the rates for washers and dryers in campus laundry rooms to $2.50 for a single load — a drop of $0.75. It will now cost students $1.75 to wash a load of clothes and an additional $0.75 to dry them.
So if you do a load of laundry a week, that’s a savings of $11.25 a semester.
Executive Director of Residential Housing Pete Trentacoste said it’s important to try to save students money wherever possible.
“One of the things I try to do is see where we can give students a break,” Trentacoste said.
The university began rolling out the new rates slowly during the first few weeks of Fall Semester and the new prices were in place at all campus laundry rooms by the first week of October.
OU makes a profit from the on campus laundry facilities. The delay in rolling of the new rates was because of an agreement needed to be reached with OU’s laundry vendor, Caldwell & Gregory. OU splits the revenue with the vendor.
Because the drop in laundry rates is still so new, it’s unclear how the revenue has been affected.
“We don’t have any metrics yet to show how the revenue stream has been impacted but we are hopeful that the reduction will actually lead to increased use of laundry,” Trentacoste said. “We don’t anticipate our revenue to go down by a significant amount.”
Residential Housing chose not to publicize the drop because of the delay in switching all of the facilities to the new rate, Trentacoste said.
Students said they are pleased to see the rates drop.
“It’s definitely great,” said Megan Hopp, a sophomore studying child and family studies. “It adds up pretty quick, which is why I typically take it home.”
Some students would like the university to go beyond dropping rates.
Tyler Kimble, a sophomore studying management and strategic leadership, said he’s happy to see the prices decrease but would like for the university to look into the possibility of including the cost of laundry in students’ room and board fee instead of charging students when the use the machines.
The University of Akron, for example, does not charge students to wash or dry their clothes.
@MariaDeVito13
md781510@ohio.edu
