Students are frustrated by laundry machines not working correctly in Walker Hall dormitory.
Students say the washing machines cause clothes to be too wet, requiring multiple cycles in the dryers, which fail to dry clothes effectively.
Meredith England, acting freshman, said some of the washing machines are not fully operational, and they also have draining issues.
“One of them, at least, is always broken, and then they don’t drain the water properly,” she said. “Sometimes, not enough water gets into the washer, so it stains your clothes with the color of the soap. I’ve just had to redo my laundry literally every time.”
England said the only time she heard anything from maintenance is when she posted about the laundry issues in the OCU Facebook group.
“I’ve put in work orders, and nothing has really happened with them,” she said. “I never heard anything about it until I posted on the Facebook page, and then someone was like, ‘we sent someone out there, and they should be fixed now.’ That’s the only confirmation I’ve ever had is when I publicly made a statement about my discontent.”
Sabrina Bartley, psychology freshman, said the washing machines’ water malfunctions waste a lot of time.
“There’s always a washer that doesn’t drain, so your clothes come out soaking wet, and so you have to put your clothes through the dryers multiple times,” she said. “It usually just results in lots of time being put into something that shouldn’t take as much time as it is.”
Casey Kreger, director of housing and residence life, said he addressed most of the issues with the laundry machines in Walker during Spring Break with the help of a new tech worker from the manufacturing company of the machines.
“During Spring Break, while the students were gone, he came out and did all of the vent cleanings in all of the laundry rooms in all of the residence halls,” he said. “It had not been done in a couple of years, and so it’s about time that we got it to happen.”
Kreger said the issues with the machines are equally due to maintenance and operator error.
“Some of the issues are mechanical, due to lack of upkeep from the company,” he said. “Some of them were issues with students not loading the machine properly. Some of the students were putting in soap pods into the actual liquid dispenser instead of just throwing it into the machine, and so that was causing issues with clogging the machine up.”
If students see an issue, they should send in a work order, Kreger said.
“If you have an issue, report it,” he said. “Just report it. We don’t know if something is not working or something’s broken unless you report it. We will do our due diligence to do our rounds and hit what we need to hit, but we may miss something. Just make sure work orders are put in.”
If any students notice any maintenance issues, they may go to okcu.edu/campus/residencelife/current-residents/work-order and follow instructions there to put in a work order.https://www.okcu.edu/campus/residencelife/current-residents/work-order
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