Madalyn Edwards curated this story by Debbie Furr, which The Appalachian published Jan. 29, 1976.
Approximately 50 students, composed primarily of SGA senators, conducted a “dirty laundry” sit-in Tuesday afternoon at a meeting held with Student Support Services Director Jairy Hunter.
The meeting, which Student Welfare Committee chairperson Susan McGee termed “polite and quiet,” was an effort on the part of the students to draw attention to growing concern over what is felt to be unsatisfactory laundry services.
According to McGee, the students entered the meeting, began dumping out their dirty laundry on the floor, and prepared to discuss their grievances, which include an insufficient number of machines, unreasonable delays in machine repairs, and a failure to refund the value of unused tokens.
“There was no attacking the Administrators or anything like that,” said McGee. “We merely had questions about why changes could not be made, and offered suggestions as to how to solve the problem.”
In response to the questions, said McGee, Hunter attempted to explain the complicated structural fee breakdown, “which was over most of our heads. “However,” said McGee, “Hunter did promise that something would definitely be done in short order.”
Hunter also said that Student Support Services has been trying to improve the situation over the past 4 years. Citing the token option as an attempt to give the students more choice in their laundry service, Hunter did admit that they had not anticipated students buying as many tokens as they have. “The problem here now is one of over-demand within the fees allotted for tokens.” he added.
The complaints aired by the students are currently under investigation, said Hunter. “All I can say is that students in vital need of having their clothes washed and dried should take them over to the laundry and use their tokens as pay,” he said.
Hunter further explained that he hoped to meet with the students again next week, at which time he will release a statement concerning how these problems will be dealt with.
