Dorm Crew Imparts Practical Benefits

CORRECTION APPENDED

Jason E. Sandler ’12 is hunched over a toilet in Pennypacker, explaining the best way to reach every stretch of porcelain, chrome, and tile in the bathroom. He pauses to describe his summer molecular biology research that could aid in early detection of atherosclerosis, before pointing out how best to eliminate soap scum from shower walls.

Sandler has been working for Dorm Crew—a branch of Harvard’s Facilities Maintenance Organization that employs students to clean in-suite bathrooms during the year—since February. He says he knew he would want a term-time job before starting college and chose Dorm Crew because of its high wages and had flexible hours.

Over the past decade, the College has begun to offer increasingly generous financial aid packages, often with the stated intention of freeing students from working term-time jobs to cover their tuition costs.

Concurrently, the number of hours logged by the average dorm crew worker has fallen by more than half. But the number of students participating in Dorm Crew—which the program head says is one of the highest-paying student jobs on campus—has increased.

This particular bathroom is surprisingly clean, Sandler says, but he isn’t especially squeamish.

“It’s just a toilet, it’s nothing...a lot of people can’t imagine doing things like cleaning toilets, but there are worse things in the world,” he says.

And to Sandler, whether he feels there is a stigma attached to working for Dorm Crew is among the least relevant questions about his job.

“You are associated with a middle or low income background—that isn’t a problem for me. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m proud. Some people ask, ‘you take pride in cleaning toilets?’ Well actually, I do,” Sandler says. “If you can do this well that’s a model for other things in your life.”

A CHANGING FACE

In September 1998, the University allocated an additional $2,000 to every College student’s financial aid package. Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles told The Crimson at the time that the funds would allow students more freedom in their extracurricular endeavors.

“With several iterations of increasing financial aid there was a dramatic fall off in work force. The intended effect of providing increasing financial aid was that students wouldn’t have to work and could focus on their studies—and it seemed to work pretty well,” says Robert F. Wolfreys, crew supervisor in the custodial services division of FMO.

In the past ten years, the total number of hours logged by dorm crew workers has fallen by 67 percent, but in the past five years, the number of students participating has risen by almost 30 percent.

“In my experience, it’s very rare for students to be doing this because they absolutely have to, it’s more for discretionary income...Not that [discretionary] income is not important, but the income isn’t an absolute necessity,” he says.

Many Dorm Crew workers use their wages to pay for summer programs abroad, or to supplement unpaid internships, says Wolfreys.

Dorm Crew captain Duncan F. Moore ’11 says financial independence was the reason he started working Dorm Crew. Last summer, Duncan used the $3,500 he earned during Spring Cleanup—the four weeks of intensive cleaning after final exams end—to pay for a summer language program in Sweden.

And Andy A. Parchman ’11 says the money from Fall Cleanup his freshman year was “just extra spending money, so I could buy three more girls drinks on a Saturday night.”

NOT-SO-DIRTY WORK

Regardless of what dorm crew workers spend their extra income on, the question of class divide and social stigma always arises when the conversation is about cleaning toilets.

“It comes with ideas about social class that people want to hide from on all different levels,” says Dorm Crew captain Jack Cen ’11. “There are poor and rich students who wouldn’t want to do it for the same reasons.”

Cen says that when he first started, he was worried about interactions with the peers whose bathrooms he was cleaning.

“When people who know me see me clean they sometimes feel uncomfortably because it humanizes something they don’t think about,” Cen says. “People say, ‘You’re at Harvard, why are you cleaning bathrooms?’ but it’s a job that needs to be done—getting into Harvard doesn’t raise you above anyone else.”

Those students who do work Dorm Crew emphasize that they choose to do so.

“I could be doing other things,” says Sandler, “But I choose to spend more than the minimum number of hours working Dorm Crew.”

And apart from occasionally opening the door on a boy in his undergarments, Marlee Chong ’13 says she has never felt uncomfortable doing her job.

Daniel Gomez, whose daughter Alexis C. Gomez ’13 decided to join Dorm Crew after her experience with fall cleanup, says he was surprised but not opposed to his daughter’s decision.

“You don’t have to work Dorm Crew—there’s no one forcing you to do it,” says Gomez. “If you were assigned this kind of work, that’s when there would be a stigma.”

A DORM CREW ADVANTAGE?

Wolfreys says Dorm Crew alumni have told him their experience has helped shape their later career paths.

“One student said that he felt the only reason he got hired by Goldman Sachs was because he was working Dorm Crew,” he says. “They expressed amazement at his work—and this student was only working Dorm Crew to help his roommate, a captain, who was short on staff.”

Robin Mount, director of the Office of Career Services, says that she believes having Dorm Crew on a resume might prove advantageous for certain professions. Library jobs, for example, might help students land a research position, while Dorm Crew might help with more hands on occupations—like medicine or banking, she says.

“The fact that someone is willing to roll up his or her sleeves has a particular appeal,” Mount says. “I think it shows stick-to-itiveness, in medical school, for example, you will not be in glamorous situations.”

Jonathan R. Murrow ’97 says his experience as a Dorm Crew captain helps him motivate residents at the Medical College of Georgia, where he works as a professor and practitioner of cardiology.

In a conversation with Wolfreys at the time he was starting his residency, Murrow said that after a spring cleanup experience, he was not worried about long hours—he had already completed one of “the most difficult tasks he would ever do,” says Wolfreys.

“I will definitely put Dorm Crew on my resume to show my organization skills and leadership,” Cen says. “It also shows the ability to give and take criticism—people at Harvard sometimes have an issue with that.”

“The prospect of being told to clean a toilet strikes people differently,” Cen says.

—Staff writer Jillian K. Kushner can be reached at kushner@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION

An earlier version of the Oct. 29 article "Dorm Crew Imparts Practical Benefits" incorrectly stated that Duncan F. Moore ’11 earned $3,500 in two weeks of Spring Cleanup. In fact, Moore earned that sums over four weeks of Spring Cleanup.