Matt RubinIn December 2003, Vice Chancellor for Students Paul Schimmele remembers clipping an editorial cartoon depicting a frustrated student with an ID card and not quite enough quarters to pay for laundry.
Less than three years later, due to a collaborative effort of several administrative offices and Student Union (SU), students will no longer have to dig for pocket change. Soon, students will be able to pay for laundry and snacks from vending machines on campus with a swipe of their ID cards.
The University has adopted a “very ambitious timeline” for the installation of card readers, said Schimmele. There are approximately 450 laundry machines in buildings owned by Residential Life and 51 vending machines on campus that have been approved for the technology.
“Right now, we’re in the process of working out details with vendors and the people we’re buying the equipment from,” said Schimmele. “Our intention is that as we get things ironed out, we’ll move as quickly as we can. My hope is that we’d have this up and running by the time everyone comes back in the fall. But we’re very confident that in the fall or shortly into the fall, we’ll at least have the laundry rooms wired.”
Students will be able to purchase credits for the system by activating a discretionary account on WebSTAC. Although the same system that is used for meal points will be used to record transactions for these credits, this discretionary account will be separate from students’ meal plans. Unlike the price of meal plan points, the price of credits for laundry and vending machines will not include built-in overhead costs.
Putting money into the account is not mandatory, and credits will carry over from year to year. Upon graduation, students can receive back any money remaining in the account for a nominal processing fee. The machines on which card readers have been installed will continue to accept cash.
Requests for a cashless system for laundry and vending machines have been ongoing for years. But it was a resolution presented by the SU Senate to the University in February 2005 calling for more features on students’ ID cards that “really got the ball rolling,” said SU senator junior Jeff Zove.
That spring, the Campus Card Steering Committee was formed to evaluate students’ opinions regarding additional capabilities for their ID cards. In September 2005, a survey was sent out to all undergraduate students. 2,400 responded, said Zove, who served as the first student on the committee. Their preferences were clear: students wanted card access to laundry and vending machines.
“We’ve worked with students, and that survey indicated laundry was far and away the single biggest thing we could possibly do to improve student life on campus,” said Schimmele, who served as the committee’s co-chair. “Vending was high as well, and we found that the software needed to run laundry card readers would allow us to add vending at the same time.”
The installation of card readers on the machines will not make Washington University a trend-setter among peer institutions, as it is currently one of the few that doesn’t have such technology in place.
“People want this,” said Zove. “A lot of students have visited other schools and seen services other schools offer. Every time they find out I’m researching [additional card-swipe capabilities] for the committee, they ask me when we are going to do this like all the other schools.”
Since the decision was announced Wednesday, feedback from students has been positive, Zove said. He has received several e-mails from students who are looking forward to the new service.
“Definitely for people living on campus, laundry services is going to be a huge bonus,” said Zove. “[.] I’ll be living in Millbrook, and it will be nice not to have my parents shipping me quarters.”
Schimmele does not expect that the “significant outlay” necessary for installing the readers will increase the prices of laundry and snacks. The University is in the midst of working out the details with Coinmach, which provides its washers and dryers, Griesedieck Vending Services, which provides its snack machines, and Coke.
In addition to working out technical details, the committee is also working on publicity.
“We’ve done the research, and now we’ve got to make it happen and get word out to students,” said Zove. “We need to target incoming freshmen to get them involved and let current students know it’s there and how to use it.”