With every load of laundry, Jumbos see at least $3 wash away. Tufts does not subsidize student laundry costs, leaving students to front their own cash for clean clothes. Having undergraduates pay for their laundry is problematic, not only because it discourages students from washing their clothes but also because it depletes the amount of spending money students can budget for each semester. Tufts must support its undergraduate students by subsidizing laundry costs, allowing for two loads per week per student.
The cost of doing laundry on campus adds up over the course of the semester. It varies by payment method (JumboCash or coins) and the frequency of loads, increasing if one chooses to pay with coins or wash more than one load every week. At a bare minimum — in a world where there are no defective laundry machines, students only wash one load of laundry every week and they pay with JumboCash — students pay $51 for laundry every semester. More realistically, however, students wash an extra load of laundry at least every other week for sheets or towels. In that scenario, laundry expenses hike up to $75 every semester.
On the Premium Meal Plan, students (namely first-years) receive $75 in JumboCash each semester, which is only enough to cover that last laundry scenario. If a student wishes to use their JumboCash for other expenses like a drink from the Rez, a snack from a local convenience store or a meal at a participating restaurant in Davis Square, they would have to add value to their JumboCash account out of their own pocket. While Tufts Dining advertises that students can use their JumboCash “At numerous locations on and off campus, including restaurants, cafés, [and] convenience stores,” students become responsible for fronting the cash for those expenses. By simply doing a typical amount of laundry, students watch their JumboCash wash away.
In its brochure explaining how JumboCash works, Tufts Dining estimates that the cost of laundry is only $30 each semester. As previously indicated, this is a tremendous underestimation. Furthermore, when students elect to pay with coins instead of JumboCash, their laundry expenses increase by 50¢ per load, amounting to $84 every semester.
These cost calculations are only accurate in a flawless laundry world wherein machines do not break down. Yet as past Daily editorials have noted, Tufts’s on-campus washers and dryers often do not work well. When dryers do not completely dry a student’s clothes, that student must pay at least an additional 25¢ for extra drying time or even more for another drying cycle. Accounting for six extra full drying cycles because of defective machines, students pay up to $84 in JumboCash or $98 in coins each semester. As a primary necessity of residential living and cleanliness, laundry should not limit students’ funds while at Tufts. But today, it does.
Just this past September, the Daily's editorial board called for Tufts to subsidize undergraduate laundry costs. It’s time for the Tufts Dining, the Financial Aid Office and the Office of Residential Life and Learning to listen.
Funding Our Future: Watching JumboCash wash away
