Students Bid Farewell to Former Room Staples

The first day of Dorm Crew’s Fall Clean Up found Undergraduate Council (UC) Vice-President and Dorm Crew Captain Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 sleeping with a bundle of T-shirts under his head.

The image was fitting, given that part of Sundquist’s job over the next week would include the removal of Harvard-issue pillows from dormitories campus-wide in accordance with a decree made by the Office of Residential Life and the Office of Physical Resources this spring.

“As a captain, I had to tell my workers to take all the pillows out, and the good ones we’ll recycle, the bad ones we’ll trash,” Sundquist’s fellow Dorm Crew Captain Marcelo Cerullo ’10 said.

The reason for the sacking of students’ fluffy head-companions was an apparent lack of enthusiasm for their presence, according to Yardops’ Associate Director of Regional Operations Zachary M. Gingo ’98.

“We found that many students didn’t use the University-provided pillows and we didn’t want to continue to be providing an item that was not being used by so many students,” Gingo said.

According to Gingo, the evidence of student apathy towards the faithful collum-cushioners was considerable. He cited both “the amount of pillows that went into the trash from student rooms at the beginning of the academic year” and “the amount of pillows that we found in closets, shoved under beds, and just clearly not used,” at the end of the academic year.

Gingo stated that it simply appeared as if dorm-dwellers were either finding the Harvard-issue pillows to be less comfortable than their own or were put off by the prospect of propping their pates on pillows carried over from previous years.

Whatever the case, Gringo noted that given the pillows’ typical life span of only three years and Dorm Crew’s habit of trashing those limp and covered in stains, about a third of the total stock (about 2,800 pillows) had to be replaced each year.

But not all students counting on a Harvard-issue pillow this fall are without hope. Cerullo reported that Adams House Master Sean Palfrey had asked Dorm Crew to leave the House’s pillows be. And according to the Office of Physical Resources, several cases of pillows had been retained to be distributed to students upon request, sparing them the 10 dollar bill for each of the pillows currently being marketed by Harvard Student Agencies.

RED PHONE EXODUS

Joining institutional pillows in the ranks of the deceased dorm room accessory, the red phones that were once standard issue for everyone from Wigglesworth to Winthrop also appear to have fallen casualty to underuse, having been removed from most dormitory rooms by University Information Services.

“At one time, the red phones were the primary way to provide students with E-911 access prior to the ubiquity of cell phones,” wrote Associate Dean of Residential Life Suzy M. Nelson in an e-mailed statement. “Now that

nearly all students have cell phones, use of the red phones is almost nonexistent. After move-in the phones were usually placed in a closet or drawer and very rarely seen again until move-out.”

Asked whether the removal of the room phones might pose a hazard in case of emergency, Nelson referenced the new campus alert system to be orchestrated this year via text message. Her e-mail to The Crimson also added that her office was “working with Financial Aid to ensure that any student who, for financial reasons, does not have access to a cell phone can get one to use as a replacement to the red phone.”

Red phones will remain in proctor and tutor suites, and in Quad dorms, after what Nelson called “an exhaustive

study of the cellular connectivity in the Houses and dorms this summer” revealed that the cellular service in the Quad was poor. Regular land-line phone service will be available to students willing to bring their own phones and pay the expense of the service, according to Nelson.

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.