The Dean of Students demands higher standards from Caldwell & Gregory
A college student may face a variety of struggles, but worrying about a lack of something clean to wear should not be among them. However, recently, UD students have encountered serious issues with their appliances.
Residents of Gregory Hall had no working washing machines for an entire week.
Residents of Theresa Hall have been forced to seek laundering outside their dorms because their dryers were smoking. Which student could feel comfortable entrusting their clothes to a machine that is smoking? As you could imagine, toting your full laundry basket across campus is anything but fun.
Hailey Duggan, Freshman psychology major lives in Theresa Hall. “Our right water was swamped with black standing water for weeks and the odor was awful. The dryer on the right makes your clothes smell smokey and burnt, and the washer on the left takes at least two cycles to dry.”
When asked how she does her laundry, Duggan said, “I have been taking all of my clothes to O’Connell.” She said, “I march down the stairs and out the front door with my laundry basket, backpack and detergent, wait for my sister to let me in, and wash my clothes in O’Connell. “
“Having washers and dryers is a bare minimum,” said Duggan. “Basic necessities such as clean clothes should be taken care of. How can our students be academically successful when they have to be constantly concerned with bare necessities?”
Dr. Roper, Dean of Students, was able to provide more information about the situation. The company responsible for the machines is Caldwell & Gregory. “We have this contract with this vendor, we don’t own these washers and dryers.”
The contract goes back nine years and the machines are eight years old, so it can be expected that they are not performing optimally. Caldwell & Gregory have not been as helpful as they could have been. The company had a change of leadership last year. Since then, Dr. Roper says, “Quality fell and the machines just kept getting worse and worse.”
Dr. Roper was on leave for the whole month of January and had to get caught up on these complaints upon his return. When he was briefed on the laundry conditions, he was far from happy. “Greg had no functional washers for a week. I kind of blew my top and called them and said, ‘No I want this fixed. I want our current problems fixed and a plan for this week.’”
Dr. Roper continued, “and to their credit, at hearing I was displeased, the CEO, who was already in Austin, made a point to come visit. They were very forthcoming, they acknowledged that they had had problems with that technology. It was pretty clear that they seemed to think things were better than they were. They also said they want to continue to have a good relationship with UD.”
Caldwell & Gregory had what Dr. Roper described as “a communication problem, an execution problem and a trust problem that stems from the other two”. Roper wants to make sure that UD is doing all it can to fix these issues. He said, “I want to acknowledge that we didn’t do enough to create our own internal process to make sure we are aware of these problems. We are going to make sure they communicate better with us so that we communicate better with you.”
Students can hope to see changes in the future. Roper said, “Caldwell & Gregory said they would assign us a designated tech going forward and allow us to see access to their maintenance log that Ms. Sales and Ms. Reid will have access to. I suggested that they put an ‘out of order’ sign on each machine, this machine needs new parts and the date it will be repaired by.”
Changes are being made to address these issues. The problem with the laundry appliances that UD students faced was unreasonable, but these issues are being addressed. UD students can expect a better process going forward.