The Washington University student ID received a facelift this summer. From laundry to vending machines, familar services are now a quick swipe away.
The highly anticipated new campus card program is a feature borne initially out of student interest. In Feb. 2005, the Student Union passed a resolution requesting the University to add new features to the student ID card.
In the fall of 2005, a survey created by the Campus Card Steering Committee (CCSC) and administered by the Student Union listed several potential services that student ID cards might begin to offer.
More than 2,300 undergraduate students took the survey. Features that the CCSC included in the campus card this year are laundry, copying and printing services and vending machines. Results showed that 87 percent of respondents rated laundry as a high priority, 82 percent for copying and printing, and 77 percent for vending machines.
With the new system in place, students can pay for these services and their meals with their ID card.
The services are part of a new account that is separate from the students’ mean plans and are also fully optional.
Students can activate their campus card accounts by clicking on “Campus Card” in WebSTAC’s menu, or in person at the ResLife offices.
Paul Schimmele, assistant to director of operations and a co-chair of the committee, said that finishing the new laundry service was of high priority “because of one thing: quarters.”
The new laundry service on the campus card eliminates the need for students to use quarters in the machines, making laundry significantly more convenient. Freshman Hunter Banks, who lives on the South 40 and who plans on using the campus card program, said simply, “It’s so easy.”
According to Schimmele, out of the 62 laundry rooms in Res-Life-operated housing, all but five or six are functioning on the new campus card system, with the remaining rooms to be added to the system in the near future.
However, as the new laundry system is still not complete, students have encountered some problems. Anna McGrew, a sophomore living on the South 40, said the system in her dorm’s laundry room was not functioning properly and that some of the machines were offline.
Schimmele added that the laundry aspect of the campus card program will not be finished for another two or three weeks as minor glitches are resolved and the remaining laundry rooms are properly equipped.
Once the system is fully operational, students can expect a failure rate on machines of around two percent.
Students may use the new card to pay for copying and printing in the Olin Library, which will start charging for these services Oct. 20.
Additionally, the campus card is also compatible with new vending machines in the School of Business, the School of Law, and the athletic center.
“It’s definitely convenient for vending, and I like how the money just goes on there immediately,” said McGrew.
In the future, Schimmele expects that there will be about 50 vending machines on campus, with new locations for machines still under consideration.
The campus card program has quickly become well used by university students. In the two weeks after the program’s launch, approximately 1,500 students added money to their campus card accounts, and as of Sept. 1 that number was approaching 2,000, said Schimmele.
WebSTAC also underwent summer changes. It now includes several new features, including housing information, a new cell phone number field in the online directory forms and the new campus card account.
Before the housing assignment feature was implemented, housing assignments were sent out by mail.
“We had a need for a long time to provide housing information to students on the web,” said Rob Wild, associate director of residential life.
Students can now access their housing information by logging into WebSTAC. This feature, according to Wild, allows all students living with Residential Life, including international students, to access their housing information with greater convenience and security.
WebSTAC additionally allows student posting for cell phone and pager numbers to the directory. These numbers can be added to the directory by logging into WebSTAC, clicking “Contact Information” and “Addresses,” and then selecting an address to change from the list.
Students can provide feedback and learn more about the new campus card program by visiting http://card.wustl.edu. The Web site also includes a laundry machine service request form, in the event of laundry machine failures.