Ten quarters — or $2.50 — is the cost to wash and dry one load of laundry in an LSU residential hall laundry room. Depending on how often a student washes his or her clothes, the routine task can become a costly chore.
Every on-campus living facility provides a laundry room or unit, but residents of the on-campus apartments have units installed directly in their apartments and do not have to pay to wash or dry loads, said Director of Housing for LSU Residential Life Karen Rockett. The LSU Department of Residential Life charges $1.25 per load to wash or dry in every Residence Hall.
Students can only pay using TigerCASH or quarters.
Rockett said the laundry facilities are under contract by laundry service company Caldwell and Gregory, which installs and maintains the machines. She said the money students pay to wash and dry their clothes goes back into operating the facilities.
“It’s just like when you run a business,” Rockett said. “You pay so much to keep [the facility] up.”
The price set to wash and dry a load of laundry is determined by the cost of the machines and their maintenance expenses, as well as the water and electricity the machines require.
Rockett said ResLife makes a small profit off of the facility costs, but the money is used to pay for the next round of upgrades to the laundry rooms. Three percent of the $1.25 goes to the Tiger Card office to pay for the service of students being able to use their Tiger Cards to pay for laundry.
“When you start factoring in what everything costs, the $1.25 is an operating expense,” Rockett said. “We don’t make this large profit that some people may think we do.”
In her 16 years at LSU, Rockett said the cost of doing laundry may have been a dollar at one point, but it has been $1.25 for a while.
Mass communication freshmen Nicholas Halaby and Courtney Beesch both live in on-campus housing in South Hall of Residential College Complex and East Laville Hall. They said they think the $1.25 they pay per load is a bit excessive but understand ResLife’s reasoning.
“I do two loads of laundry, and that’s $5 a week,” Halaby said. “I get it, but it adds up.”
Beesch said she wishes there were more units available, especially when residents forget their laundry in the washer or dryer and inconvenience other students.
The number of units in each ResLife Hall is based on a ratio of 30 students to one machine, Rockett said.
“We’re both out-of-state, and I know it has to do with energy costs, but [the price] is still too much,” Beesch said.
Halaby and Beesch said they contemplated washing their clothes every two weeks, but neither could commit.
“I think of it as living in an apartment,” Halaby said. “These things cost money just like anywhere else. If they put it in our housing package, then people would be upset about housing going up.”
Beesch said she has come to accept the $1.25 per load cost.
“You feel like you’re already paying so much for your meal plan and your housing plan that having this extra cost of a necessity is a little taxing,” Beesch said. “I’m from Arizona, so there’s no going home on the weekends and doing laundry at my house for me, so there’s no way around it.”
Washing machine prices inside the dorm rooms are set to $1.25 a load making it $5.00 just to clean and dry two loads of laundry on Tuesday Oct. 06, 2015, in Laville Hall on LSU campus.
