DAVIDSON, N.C. — When Davidson College students wrap up their studies in a little less than a year, they will also close the book on a unique chapter in the school’s history: “free” full-service laundry provided to all the students.
For more than 90 years, Davidson College students had the option to have their laundry cleaned and folded by workers at the institution’s own laundry facility. The school did not charge students up-front for the drop-off service; it was included in their tuition and fees. But the college recently announced that after May 2015, the facility will close, ending the full-service laundry tradition that many students and alums held dear.
“I’m sure for any student who regularly used our service, there’s a sense of loss about that,” says Richard Terry, the college’s director of auxiliary services.
But closing the laundry will allow the college to save a significant amount of money—as much as $400,000 a year, according to Terry. The college says the closing will help the institution in “aligning its resources to meet educational priorities within the changing landscape of higher education.”
“Raising the tuition an additional amount to continue to provide this service just didn’t seem like the responsible thing to do,” says Terry. In absence of the full-service laundry, students will have the option of using self-service machines in facilities across the campus which, like the full-service laundry, will have no up-front costs for students.
“The plan going forward is we will continue to not charge for the use of those self-service machines,” Terry says, adding that many students prefer to use the self-service machines anyway, even with the availability of the full-service laundry.
THE FACILITY
The Lula Bell Houston laundry, named for an employee who worked there nearly 60 years, opened in 1920. The 6,800-square-foot facility employs 14 full-time and part-time workers today; the college says it is trying to help those employees transition to other roles as the laundry service is discontinued.
About 430,000 pounds of laundry are processed there in a typical year, according to Terry. Equipment in the facility includes three 125-pound washers and three 85-pound washers by UniMac; 10 stacked dryers and a 100-pound single-pocket dryer by Huebsch; an ironer by Continental Girbau; a Unipress double-buck shirt press, and an Ajax shirt press that has been used at the facility for 47 years. Most garments are hand-folded, and some items are pressed and returned on hangers.
Terry says the college is still exploring options for how to use the facility once the laundry service has been discontinued, adding that school officials will be soliciting input from students. He says it is likely that the building will be used as a large, central Laundromat. No matter what’s in store in the future, it will still bear the name of Lula Bell Houston, who retired from the laundry in 2004.
Houston, who worked in several capacities during her many years at the laundry, says she “wasn’t too surprised” to learn of the laundry’s impending closure, but that she’ll miss all the friends she made over the years.
“I got so close with the students,” she says, “I met so many of them—they would come to me for advice.”
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