The Department of Maintenance and Facilities has altered the staffing and scheduling on dorm cleaning duty for the 2013-2014 school year.

Instead of staffing one custodial worker to clean an entire dorm throughout the day, the Department has switched to a system where 5 custodial workers clean a dorm in an hour and a half. John Wichser, the Head of Department and Facilities, said this was the most cost efficient method of cleaning the dorms.

The Facilities Department is trying to do more cleaning while the dorms are unoccupied and students are in class, Wichser said. “We feel like a better job is done with less people in the building.”
“When the students aren’t here it’s a lot easier,” Helena Dorsey, a member of the Hood custodial staff, said. The new system allows custodial staff to clean bathrooms and vacuum without disturbing students, which in turn, also decreases the time spent cleaning, she said.

“The change helps us all. When one person is doing the building, you know, you got a lot of work to do,” Dorsey said.

Now that the custodial staff is cleaning dorms in shorter periods of time when students are out of the dorms, interactions between students and staff have been limited.

Several students have commented that they occasionally say ‘Hello’ to the staff, but do not get a chance to talk to them frequently. “I see the staff every day, and always try to say hi, but I don't know their names,” said Chadbourne Allen, a freshman.

Dorsey agreed it’s difficult to interact with students because of the changes to the cleaning schedule, but affirms that the changes allow staff to clean more efficiently.

“They miss us and we miss them,” Dorsey said. “We don’t get to see the students we’ve gotten to know over the years because of the changes, but that’s okay because every now and then we might run into each other.”

Some students have commented that the time limit constrains custodial staff and affects the quality of cleanliness. “I think it’s less clean because throughout the day they’re able to continually clean, but if they just clean in the morning the dorm’s just get dirtier throughout the day,” said Nathaniel Leighton, a junior and Resident Assistant on Smith Dorm.

Despite negative criticism, the Facilities Department has not received any complaints for unclean or neglected areas of the residence halls this year, Wichser said. “As with any change to routine, there is an adjustment period, but the new schedule, overall, has worked well.”