Room-Cleaning Service Reduced, But Baths Still Swabbed Weekly

The University has cut its student room-cleaning service by half because of a manpower shortage.

Student porters will vacuum undergraduate rooms only on alternate weeks this year, instead of each week as in the past. Bathroom cleaning, however, remains a weekly service.

Paul L. Smith, assistant superintendent of Caretaking, said yesterday that service will be reduced because fewer students agreed to work as student porters this Fall.

According to Smith, the many other work options now open to students have reduced the dorm crew's available manpower. The dining halls have increased their student demands this year from 300 to 350. In addition, federal work-study programs have attracted increasing numbers of students.

The dorm crew's normal work capacity requires 140 students--125 absolutely necessary for service plus a 15-man supplementary "crash crew." According to Smith, this force is always reduced at several times during the school year, particularly after November hour exams when poor grades prompt many freshmen--who make up the majority of the dorm crew--to give up their jobs.

With a reduced number of student workers available from the start this year, Smith said he saw that it would be impossible to maintain normal weekly service at the peak "drop-out" times. The Caretaking Department, he said, decided to cut the vacuuming service now rather than have students complain when it stopped coming regularly in November.

With the reduction, the crew's manpower requirements are cut to 120, including a reduced "crash crew." By yesterday, the Student Employment Office had found only 117 students for the crew.

The decision will affect only undergraduate Houses and dorms. Tutors and graduate students are served by a separate maid service.

This new reduction in undergraduate room service marks a tremendous decline from the service given Harvard men in the Houses before World War II.

A student in a House during the 1930's received lavish daily maid service (cleaning, room straightening, bed-making) as well as personal service in the dining hall.

The University substituted the student porter service for the maids in 1953, in an attempt to provide more jobs for College students and at the same time keep room costs down.