It's Not Just Suds And Mops: Discover Dorm Crew Perks

After class some students head to the athletic field. Others rush off to one club meeting after another. Still others...clean bathrooms? These students have joined the "crew" that does no rowing. Rather, the 140 hardy souls in the Harvard dorm crew are paid to clean. Divided into 16 House teams led by fearless captains, these students get their workout scrubbing the floor next door.

There is some variety to a dorm crew routine, and some perks as well. Crew workers choose between dry work, taking out trash, sweeping and mopping; or wet work, cleaning bathrooms. Surprise--most workers say they prefer the bathrooms to the hallways.

Jason J. Sunderson '01, the Mather House Captain, says most workers initially choose dry work, but the appeals of the wet side soon become apparent.

"Newcomers usually like to start with dry work because most of them are anti-bathroom," he says. "They don't want to have to touch toilets or scrub showers or anything like that."

"But then they realize that wet work is much, much easier. The hours are much more flexible and if you repeat the same bathrooms over and over each week, then they don't get as dirty, and it's less of a job," Sunderson says.

The choice, then, is based on the perks involved in jobs that can soon occupy much of workers' time and dominate their Harvard extracurricular experience.

Dorm crew work is better than most students might expect. The high wages are attractive, but the tasks--like scrubbing other peoples' toilets--sway many students into accepting less messy desk jobs. Dorm crew workers make the best of their environs.

Emily O. Matthews '01, the Lowell House captain, says she likes wet work because she has time to think while alone in the bathrooms doing manual labor.

"It's actually a great place to think about the thesis for your next Expos paper," she says.

On occasion, workers even get academic advice from unlikely sources.

There is an advising network among dorm crew workers, but also in the friendly banter between workers and residents of the suites they're cleaning.

"Though I would never initiate a conversation with the people whose bathroom I was cleaning, they were always really cool with me and would talk to me," says Timothy P. Durrett '99, who has worked dorm crew for almost four years.

In addition to advice about classes, Durrett says he was lucky enough to receive gifts from students as well.

"I remember that one Halloween a group of guys even left me some beer," he says.

Although workers may occasionally converse with residents, wet work is frequently done alone in the bathroom, which some workers name as a drawback. Instead, they choose dry work for its camaraderie and the friends they make.

Durrett first switched to dry work because he was sensitive to the chemicals involved in clearing bathrooms.

"I would have to breathe this horrible mist in and out all day long," Durrett says. "I also hated the way that my hands were always wet, my gloves would get sticky and the bathrooms would become uncomfortably hot because of the steam."

After he shifted to the dry side, Durrett discovered its social benefits.

"Now that I do dry work, I get to work with another person on the job," he says. "We eat breakfast together every morning and talk as we do our work or take out the trash."

Whether it is dry or wet work, dorm crew offers physical benefits desk jobs just cannot provide. While standing at a photocopier is hard on the back and knees, dorm crew workers are on their knees, scrubbing away.

"Forget about going to the gym," Sunderson says. "All you need to do for a good workout is to join the dorm crew."

"From lugging buckets up stairs to scrubbing the tiles of showers, wet and dry work is a very demanding job," Matthews says.

Dorm crew, even the dry side, is certainly not as dry as a desk job. Workers say exposure to a wide variety of undergraduate bathrooms has given them some lessons in life.

Matthews says that she has had quite a few "interesting experiences" cleaning guys' bathrooms.

"It's just funny to see how many guys actually use apricot facial scrub," she says. "And I also never knew how popular Noxzema products were with males before I did wet work. The other thing that I remember about cleaning guys' bathrooms was the large number of Playboy magazines strewn all over the place."

According to Matthews, cleaning bathrooms taught her that particular suites reflect the people living in them.

"Girls just have more stuff cluttering their bathrooms and guys are generally messier," she says. "But across the board, the worst by far are the seniors."

Except, perhaps, those seniors who have worked dorm crew themselves. Jason S. Cassidy '98 had a prolific dorm crew career, culminating his four year career with a stint as head captain. After cleaning up at Harvard, Cassidy went straight from four years of dorm crew to Wall Street and Salomon Smith Barney.

"I learned leadership through dorm crew in a trial and error process," he says. "Though I didn't know about leading people to complete a task at first, I learned how as time went on."

Cassidy says dorm crew gave him a rare opportunity to learn job skills useful after Harvard. "Because the deadlines for dorm crew are different than due dates for papers, dorm crew is much closer to the real world," he says.

The job experience of dorm crew gave Cassidy the skills that many students seek from their extracurriculars--but he got his at $8.50 per hour.