McKeon Hall, home to approximately 400 freshmen, has one laundry room that inexplicably brings out the animalistic nature of the residents who use it. The luxury of free laundry comes at the cost of pure, unadulterated chaos and savagery. With only 10 washing machines and 12 dryers at the disposal of hundreds of freshmen, any social norms that may exist in a regular laundry room are completely disregarded.

As Fordham struggles to house the considerable number of freshman residents, McKeon would benefit greatly from improvements to the laundry room. Another laundry room may be wishful thinking, but encouraging students to keep the space clean while being more responsible for their belongings is a start. 

In McMahon Hall, the laundry rooms have previously been reported to be in far worse shape with broken machines, water spewing on the floor and a lack of machine availability. According to Fordham’s laundry app CyclePay, there are 18 washers and 24 dryers for the 773 students living in McMahon, but whether or not they work is a gamble. The poor state of McMahon’s laundry rooms indicates a grim future for McKeon if the community continues to let the laundry room deteriorate. 

Attempting to do your laundry between sunrise and sunset is an amateur move — it will almost always result in a pitiful defeat involving a long elevator ride to your room with a sack of dirty laundry in hand. There are simply not enough machines to accommodate the number of people living in McKeon, which results in intense competition for any that become available throughout the day. If you do make it in, walking into a laundry room full of anxious people sitting on the window ledge calculating the exact moment they will attack a machine is intense. The ruthless culture surrounding the claiming of machines is bound to make anyone crumble. 

The clothing removal policy in the laundry room is cutthroat. If you are not standing attentively at your washer or dryer the second your cycle ends, there is a strong chance someone will remove your clothes and put them on top of the washer or on the window ledge. The look of unfiltered defeat on a person’s face after they’ve waited too long to remove their clothes from a machine is a pitiful and sad reality of the McKeon laundry room. 

I’m ashamed to admit that I have had to take someone’s laundry out of a washer or dryer when all the other machines were full. Although I feel it is a minor invasion of privacy to take out someone’s laundry, the current state of the laundry room leaves no choice. CyclePay does let users see available machines in their laundry rooms and how long their cycles have left, but many students are unaware of its existence. 

The washing and drying machines endure so much use from students that their condition is noticeably deteriorating. The green mold that lines every washing machine has been an issue for months. I am also convinced a demon possesses certain machines because every time I am using two at once, there is a guarantee one of them will add an extra 10 minutes to the cycle. One washing machine was also broken for the entirety of last semester, which made a significant impact on the already overcrowded laundry room. 

By far the most astonishing part of the laundry room is the assortment of clothes and trash left behind by students. It is constantly covered with piles of clothes students forget about when doing their laundry. Although the clothes left behind get donated, according to emails sent to freshmen from ResLife regarding the state of the laundry room, the sheer amount left behind is unsettling. I can’t help but wonder how someone can leave their laundry and never come back to get it — how can these people afford to lose their clothes so casually and not seem to care? 

I encourage residents to be grateful that laundry is free on campus, and to not take advantage of it by leaving clothes and trash in this shared space. Do everyone a favor and set a timer when doing your laundry — or do it at 11 p.m. instead of 11 a.m. We can all work together to make the laundry room better. It’s time to wash away the past, dry our tears and finally end the cycle.