The Case for DormAid

In recent weeks, there has been a great deal of attention paid to DormAid—a student-run business that will soon be providing professional cleaning service on campus. The issue of running such a business on campus is a complex one and should not be judged lightly. The following is the case for DormAid, provided in an effort to foster a better understanding amongst students and administrators about what DormAid is and why it will provide a valuable service to the Harvard community.

DormAid LLC is a student-run cleaning service. The business has gone through extensive negotiations with a consortium of administrators and House Masters to work out mutually-acceptable policies regarding insurance, security, the living wage, and Massachusetts’ laws regarding cleaning agents. The founding of the company has been one of compromise and negotiation in an effort to ease concerns over the well-being of the Harvard community. In response to these concerns, DormAid has developed a business model that maximizes the benefit of having such a company operating on campus while minimizing, if not altogether eliminating, the detriments.

To ensure the safety of students and students’ property, a Harvard student-manager escorts two professional cleaners to the room which they are scheduled to clean. The purchaser is required to be there to, at a minimum, allow the cleaner and student crew access to the room. The clients, company and staff are all protected by a combination of insurance and bonding.

Although DormAid does not in any way parallel the services provided by Harvard employees, the company has also made it a point to subscribe to the labor norms present on campus. All DormAid cleaning professionals are paid the same living wage that any similarly employed worker on-campus would receive. In this manner, DormAid is actively creating more jobs for low-income workers in the area and raising their rate of pay a full 25 percent above the off-campus rate.

Being a company formed by students to provide other students with a valuable service, DormAid operates at a low profit-margin to make its product available to the most students possible. At a price per clean of less than most DVDs, we have done our absolute best to ensure that one clean per month is as affordable as possible to as many students as possible.

To prevent friction between roommates, DormAid is a fully configurable service: students are able to choose how much and how often they clean—specifying dates, times, and specific rooms within the suites. In this way, one person’s decision to employ the service does not become a burden to that person’s roommate. Unlike a host of other products ranging from microfridges to water coolers, televisions, video, stereo, and gaming systems, the cleaning service DormAid provides can be easily bought by all or just by some members of a room—the cost split accordingly.

Moreover, the benefits to the larger Harvard community are notable. Roommates who choose not to employ the service will likely still benefit from the healthier, cleaner space provided by a fellow roommate’s purchase. Dorm Crew workers will face a lighter load when conducting their seasonal full cleans of rooms that, in the past, have often not been cleaned throughout the year. Not to mention, the regular maintenance of the dorms that DormAid provides ensures their quality for generations of occupants to come.

The criticisms of DormAid’s presence are understandable, but do not outweigh the benefits the service provides. Although it is true that the service will cost money, it is unlikely that the hiring of a cleaning service will be as economically divisive among the student body as more demonstrable forms of wealth such as cars, clothes, big screen TVs, satellites, laptops, desktops, stereos, iPods, and so on—the list is inexhaustible.

Nonetheless, the most important issue at hand is economic freedom. The principles of free enterprise and the right of every citizen in a just and fair society to decide how and when to purchase what they will are the cornerstones of any democratic meritocracy. Dorm life is not a mandatory egalitarian process imposed upon us by the College to distort our view of how societies run best. Nor is it a system designed to paternalistically decide what is fair and unfair consumption based upon income brackets. Rather, dorm life is a system designed to facilitate our studies here. The vast majority of students elect to live in the Houses—and the College provides these accommodations—because they make our lives as students easier to manage; even financial aid recipients have the option of renting off-campus rooms rather than using their aid to pay for room and board at the College. In a random sample survey conducted by DormAid in November 2004, it was found that approximately 70 percent (with a margin of error of 7 percent) of students on-campus do not believe that economic disparities among students was an adequate enough reason to prevent DormAid from operating.

The logic behind that result is simple. Because an individual’s use of DormAid does not lessen the quality of life of those who choose not to use it, it should be a viable option for the former. As the 20th century has proved a disastrous experiment for Marxism and centrally-planned normative dictates, our campus should be respectful of our fellow students’ freedom of choice and not unreasonably prescribe personal consumption preferences as social ideals. It is DormAid’s mission to increase the quality of life on campus. We hope that in the coming months, that goal will be apparent, realized, and supported.

Joseph T.M. Cianflone ’07, a Crimson editorial comper, is an economics concentrator in Leverett House. He is the General Counsel for DormAid.