After returning from Spring Break, some Northwestern students living on campus were greeted with a new laundry system.
Kurtis Fjerstad did his laundry in the basement of McCulloch Hall on Thursday night. A new card reader had been installed in the room, and a sign on the machine read “WildCards (sic) inserted into this reader will have ONLY money deducted from your Munch Money account.”
“It used to be on a different system,” Fjerstad, a Weinberg freshman, said. “You could use your card or quarters. … Ever since they changed that, it really hasn’t worked, at least for me.”
Students formerly paid for laundry through the Cash-to-Card system, which provides machines around campus where students can put cash directly onto their WildCARDs and use it to pay for laundry, vending machine purchases and printing and copying in the University Library. According to an e-mail sent Monday to residents of Bobb-McCulloch by Area Coordinator Angela Layne, the CashStripe on the back of WildCARDs will no longer work for laundry purchases.
Last week, students said the system suddenly changed to accepting only WildCat Points, which are allotted as part of a student’s meal plan. The system then changed to accepting only Munch Money, which is loaded onto students’ cards in $25 minimum increments via the nuCuisine Web site and does not come with students’ meal plans. Munch Money expires at the end of the academic year.
Samantha Egle, a Communication freshman, said she disliked the new system and created a Facebook group titled “Fix the NU Laundry Plan.” As of Thursday night, the group had 366 members.
“They changed the plan to something that me and my friends saw as inefficient,” Egle said. “They also didn’t tell us.”
University Residential Life and community assistants seemed unaware of the changes at the time, she said.
“It just seemed really poorly organized,” Egle said. “It’s kind of difficult to come back from Spring Break and having it go to points. Food and laundry seem so separate.”
In the e-mail, Layne said the system had changed “to be able to implement improved features.” Res Life, Facilities Management and the Undergraduate Housing Office directed calls to housing operations, which could not be reached for official comment.
In response to complaints about the switch, students were given free laundry beginning Tuesday, April 13 through “the end of next week,” according to an e-mail sent to residents by Ryan Reinhart, assistant director of Res Life. The laundry was given to students as a thank-you for their patience “as the laundry issues get resolved” and told students to expect an update on new features “in the very near future.”
Check back for updates throughout the weekend.
