For Messes, A Hefty Price Tag

When Allie F. Rosene-Mirvis ’09 moved into Lowell last week, she had a less-than-merry welcome awaiting her in her new dorm—trash bags were piled in the middle of the room, clothes were left about, and unfinished bottles of alcohol remained from bygone days, she said.

Like other students who stay on campus after move-out to participate in college-related activities­—Commencement Choir in Rosene-Mirvis’ case—she had been assigned to live in Lowell for “bridge” housing, as the housing period between move-out and Commencement is called.

Generally, term-time occupants clean out their rooms well enough to avoid a termbill charge, making the move-in by bridge residents more pleasant than Rosene-Mirvis’s experience.

Rosene-Mirvis said the former occupants of her room failed to clean it sufficiently.

“I think they just left whatever they didn’t feel like taking,” she said.

Roughly 200-300 students receive termbill charges for damage done to 75-150 rooms each year, according to Yard Operations Manager of Administrative Operations Zachary M. Gingo ’98.

Gingo said the most common charge was for excess trash left in rooms, but he noted that the amount of trash students have left behind “has shrunk significantly in the past five years.” He attributed the decreased amount of trash to greater awareness by students of the option to donate items to Habitat for Humanity and the efforts made by Yard and House personnel to remind students to dispose of or donate their unwanted items.

Other damage that could receive a charge, according to Gingo, includes “any number of things,” such as painted walls and broken windows. “It’s not nickel-and-dime stuff,” he said.

Students are termbilled according to the amount of money it costs for their damage to be repaired—students leaving a “tremendous amount of trash” are charged for the extra manpower required to remove their waste and broken windows are charged the amount required for repair—an amount that can be anywhere from $100-$3,000, depending on the size of the window, Gingo said.

All residents of a room receive the same termbill charge, but students can request to pay a greater portion of the total bill if they wish to take particular responsibility for the damage, Gingo said. Students are usually notified of any charges via e-mail within the first week after move-out.

Gingo said that though levying charges on students is something building managers do “reluctantly,” they do so in order to keep all students from having to pay the costs of repairing specific rooms.

Sheehan D. Scarborough ’07, one of two head captains for dorm crew, said that in general, freshman rooms tend to be cleaner than House rooms. Seniors, who stay in their rooms until the day after Commencement, generally leave a great deal of trash behind, Scarborough said.

Dorm crew worker YingYing Fok ’09 and her group came across a room in Weld that Fok’s dorm crew captain recommended receive a termbill charge. Though dorm crew workers do not levy termbill charges, they alert Yard Operations or House supervisors if they come across a room that is especially messy.

Fok said they found cosmetic stains, trash, and posters on the walls in the Weld room. “It was more like people took their own belongings and left everything else behind,” she said. Her crew also found stains in the hallway that they attributed to vomit, she added.

Such vestiges of past parties aside, Fok said that the most of rooms her crew cleaned had been cleared-out sufficiently by their previous occupants. In general, Fok said, “you could tell that people took time to clean out their stuff before they moved out.”

—Staff writer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.