Costs Steep for Commencement Move-Out

Nothing in life is free--not even moving out of Harvard's dorms at the end of each academic year.

Although there are relatively few explicit costs for students who pack up and move home for the summer, the College pays a hefty price to get undergraduates out of their rooms and move alumni in.

Perhaps the most significant of these costs are those associated with Dorm Crew.

After all the boxes are packed and the furniture stored, a team of about 390 student workers tackle the accumulated grime of eight months of student occupation, according to Dorm Crew Director Robert Wolfreys.

Scrubbing bathroom floors, sweeping corners and vacuuming rugs, the workers earn a minimum of $8.85 per hour. One 40-hour week of work for those 390 employees costs the College's Houses and Yard operations a total of $138,060. Typically, however, those employees work significantly longer hours, racks up higher costs for Harvard in overtime wages.

But once the dorms have been given a peripheral cleaning, several different maintenance outlays address more specific problems in the rooms.

According to Kathleen A. Bray, director of Yard Operations, three maintenance teams--composed of carpenters, painters and shades repairers--tackle a "laundry list" of problems throughout the Yard residence halls.

Bray estimated that the carpenter team will cost between $8,000 and $10,000, the painters about $5,000 and the shades repairers between $2,000 and $3,000, bringing a total to about $16,000.

"Overall, that's not too bad," Bray said.

In addition, Bray said her office hires additional student labor for the move-out period, which she said amounts to roughly $1,000 in extra wages.

The College is forced to shell out still more money to accommodate the gargantuan quantities of garbage produced by students moving out of their dorms.

According to Robert M. Gogan, supervisor of waste management, the College's contracts with waste hauling firms already take into account the need for extra trash capacity, such as dumpsters.

But Gogan said the College does have to pay for whatever increased tonnage the Houses generate. He estimated that in both May and June of this year, the Houses would generate about 600 tons of waste--about 200 tons more than usual per month. Since each ton of waste costs about $60, the College can expect to pay some $12,000 extra per month.

By the same token, Gogan said the Houses and the Yard residences also generated about 55 tons of paper recycling waste during move-out period--about one-third higher than normal. With recycling charged at $20 per ton, the additional waste costs the College another extra $1,100.

Moreover, to help ease some of the parking problems associated with the process, Director of Transportation Services John W. Nolan estimated that his office spent about $2,500 to secure extra parking during the four or five-day moving period.

In addition, he said the one additional shuttle bus deployed to facilitate on-campus transportation cost about $310.

In order to keep everything running smoothly, the College also usually hires extra police labor.

Although he said it would be difficult to predict exact figures on the cost of the additional police forces, Captain Charles A. Schwab said he anticipated hiring seven extra officers and one supervisor all for a 10-hour shift to help accommodate the move-out process for seniors.

He said the additional costs associated with the stepped up police presence would round out at about $3,000.