<p>As the parent of an applicant, this speaks to one of my concerns.</p>
<p>1moremom:</p>
<p>LOL. This reminds me of my grad student days, when H and I lived on a shoestring while also learning the finer domestic arts. One foreign graduate student couple was accused by their live-in maid of exploiting and abusing her. It turned out that the maid was a college graduate in her home country and the hiring grad couple had brought her to provide full-time live-in help. Harvard paid her fare back home. </p>
<p>There are many ways in which wealthier students distinquish themselves from their less affluent schoolmates. Using dormaid must be one of the more benign forms, and possibly of benefit to all. Thinking back on the pigsty that was my S's apartment (shared with 9 other students), I feel that a service such as Dormaid might not have been such a bad idea.</p>
<p>"After recent approval by Associate Dean of the College Thomas A. Dingman 67, other members of the Deans office, and all 12 House Masters, a new student service is sweeping onto campus. Dormaid, founded by Michael E. Kopko 07, is a cleaning service that allows students to avoid the perennial problem of dingy, smutty, questionably-habitable rooms."</p>
<p>I agree that it's a bad idea. The argument about the division between the haves and have nots doesn't concern me. I just think that college is a time for students to learn what it means to be responsible for themselves -- including for keeping their living quarters habitable. That's a lesson that everyone needs to know.</p>
<p>I dislike it for both the have/have not issue and NSM's reasons.</p>
<p>It just doesn't seem like something that needs to be available.</p>
<p>Having thought more about it, I decided that I also don't like the have vs. have not issue. Originally, this hadn't bothered me because when I remembered my own college experience as a Harvard scholarship student, I remembered, too, that most of my friends also were scholarship students who wouldn't have splurged for maid service.</p>
<p>Thinking about it more, though, I realize that the have vs. have not problem still would have come up. Two of my five suitmates were not on scholarship. It would have been rather embarassing if they had decided to spring for maid service or had asked the rest of us to chip in for it.</p>
<p>In addition, I think that some of the scholarship students would have been working for dormaid, which would have further deliniated the haves from the have nots.</p>
<p>I notice that on the Dormaid web pages, they indicate a warm welcome for students wishing to work for the company.</p>
<p><a href="https://dormaid.com/faq.asp#1%5B/url%5D">https://dormaid.com/faq.asp#1</a></p>
<p>Anyway, overall it's a bad idea. Harvard isn't a country club. No reason for the house masters to allow services that act like it is supposed to be one. It's a really bad message, too, at a time in which Harvard is trying to attract more low income students.</p>
<p>Hey, lets not beat up Harvard over this Dormaid is at Boston College and is coming to Brown and Princeton</p>
<p>OK, the perceived elitism was one of my concens about Princeton as well. (Brown and BC were never on our list.)</p>
<p>Fair enough, Sybbie. Let's just say I think it's a bad idea everywhere.</p>
<p>I do not agree with this article at all. My son is on full financial aid in a prep school. There is cleaning service that his roommates and other people use in his dorm. On other hand, he does his laundry himself. Does it make him small or feel small. he better be prepared for life and motivate himself that he can make that kind of money that his kids do not have to do laundry himself. </p>
<p>What are we doing by supporting this policy of no maid is saying that if we can not afford it then no one is allowed to have it. Boy these liberal are going nuts. How long we are going to protect kids? Please stop it.</p>
<p>If people are so uncomfortable then do not go to these schools. I rather work myself and get paid to clean the rooms and study. When I came to this country I worked as a TA but I also cleaned my department in order to get extra money. Why these parents wants to cutoff my source of extra money. Please do not allow the liberals to do so.</p>
<p>Our middle-class frat house had daily maid service for all the rooms and common areas. My state U dorm also had some daily maid service but they did not make your bed like our beloved Hazel did.</p>
<p>Haves vs. have nots?</p>
<p>I also think it's a bad idea. Now that your kid is out of his or her room, he/she should learn about keeping a place somewhat clean, one way or another. Enough time to hire a cleaning service when you're an Upwardly Mobile whatever-is-today's-catchphrase.</p>
<p>As far as the effects of a student laundry service, I guess things have changed since I was in college. I started out using that service but, like many students, stopped after they turned all my underwear blue.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Hey, lets not beat up Harvard over this Dormaid is at Boston College and is coming to Brown and Princeton<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Yeah, funny how this suddenly became an issue, especially a "have not" issue, when it came to Harvard, but when it came to BC we never heard a peep about it. People are always looking for another stick to hit Harvard with.</p>
<p>As for my D, she gets to manage her own affairs. We've set her up with the basics and a moderate allowance for ongoing expenses. That there is now a maid service that represents a new potential expense will not trigger an increase in the allowance. If she wants the Dormaid service she will have to pay for it out of what she already gets and do without something else. It's up to her. However, given that her room has always looked like a train wreck for her entire life, I can't see her spending good money on getting it cleaned. A clean room is clearly something she is cheerfully willing to do without.</p>
<p>I consider myself a liberal, but on this I agree with parentny. Why is it demeaning for a student on financial aid to be doing cleaning service but not demeaning to be shelving books in the library or working in the cafeteria? I waited table one summer before grad school and earned a nice amount of money in tips. Before I did, however, I had to convince my parents that waiting table was not hopelessly declasse. There are many many other ways of highlighting income differentials besides pointing to the relative tidiness of dorm rooms. Like wearing certain kinds of clothes, going to expensive restaurants or shows which poorer friends cannot afford, talking about winter breaks in Europe or in the Caribbean or in Cancun... the list could go on.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Now that your kid is out of his or her room, he/she should learn about keeping a place somewhat clean, one way or another. >> Beats me why we should expect kids to learn to tidy their room now that they're away from home when mom and dad could not train them in the previous 18 years.</p> </blockquote>
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[quote]
Beats me why we should expect kids to learn to tidy their room now that they're away from home when mom and dad could not train them in the previous 18 years.
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<p>Marite, as soon as kids are out where Mom and Dad are not watching, they suddenly learn things that they couldn't learn before. Of course, it's not always predictable which such things they learn, or when.</p>
<p>dadofsam:</p>
<p>Four years of college did not train my S into being any neater than he had been at home. When I went to visit the apartment he shared with 9 other students (5 males, 5 females), I gagged and spent half my time cleaning the bathroom. I did train both my Ss into changing their bedsheets once a week, and this habit carried into summer camps and college.</p>
<p>It's not a "liberal" issue, for gosh sakes. Why should any business be allowed into the dorms. It has nothing to do with social engineering, to expect to keep businesses out of the home of the students. Should we let parking attendants run a concession in the parking lots, or maybe cordon off half the cafeteria and kitchen so students can hire private waiters and chefs?</p>
<p>Just don't see why Harvard, or BC, or anyone else, needs to cater to this.</p>
<p>But why should students not be allowed to bring business into their homes if they wish to? Unless Dormaid intrudes on other students' privacy or convenience, I don't see why its services should be banned.</p>
<p>I was responding to the idea that Dormaid would drive a wedge between the haves and have-nots and that letting students wade in a mess of their own making is somehow educational. But let's think also of students who would like to earn some money. There's already the Harvard Student Agencies. I believe they send cleaning crews throughout the college and into Boston. Is Dormaid a different kind of business? Is it really any different from the pizza delivery and hawkers of bagel and lox I remember from my own college days?</p>
<p>Precisely because I am a political progressive, I agree with Marite and parentny, though I am sure neither of my kids is going to use his/her hard-earned money on something like this. </p>
<p>At my kids' school, at least, there are students involved in all sorts of enterprises, such as selling televisions, loft beds, futons, birthday cakes, and so on. If you look at the Dormaid website, this company is the brainchild of a bunch of enterprising students and recent grads, marketing cleaning as one more service. There are students all over our college campuses earning money one way or another. I earned most of my spending money in college by typing and editing other students' papers. Why do we think that cleaning is a different kind of service than any other? Do we attach some kind of cachet to having others clean our floor? Or do we consider those who clean for us to be lesser, lowlier beings? Maybe, looking at this carefully, Dormaid offers an opportunity to rethink the relationship between cleaners and those who hire them and to be more respectful.</p>
<p>Thank you aparent. You made the point I was trying to make about. </p>
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<blockquote> <p>Why do we think that cleaning is a different kind of service than any other? Do we attach some kind of cachet to having others clean our floor? Or do we consider those who clean for us to be lesser, lowlier beings? Maybe, looking at this carefully, Dormaid offers an opportunity to rethink the relationship between cleaners and those who hire them and to be more respectful.>> Maybe if those who do the cleaning are fellow students, the type of arrogant behavior chronicled in "Harvard Works" will be reduced and those affluent students who think nothing of putting their shoes on a table that has just been polished by an immigrant cleaner in full sight of the clearner will rethink their attitude.</p> </blockquote>
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<p>I don't find anything wrong with the system of maids. I think students need to learn, from youth, that everything is not equal. Frankly, I don't see why students should find it demeaning to do their own laundry while others hire maids. Service is noble. People don't seem to realize that, but any kind of labor, whether academic or physical, is a noble pursuit. If some students learn how to do their own laundry, they will be getting themselves farther in life. If others choose to hire maids, they are depriving themselves. It is not arrogant behavior. Arrogant behavior stems from one person feeling that he or she is higher than others. YOU are the ones implying that someone hiring a maid v. them doing their own laundry implies superiority/infereriority. It doesn't.</p>