The floor of the two-room triple that Matthew Chin '07, Kyle Owusu '07 and Benjie Lewis '05 share is strewn with stray socks and unidentifiable bits of food. Two of the beds are covered only partially with sheets, with blue- and white-striped mattresses and foam egg crates exposed. This corner room in Mid-Massachusetts hall could certainly benefit from DormAid, a cleaning service founded by brothers Mike and Matt Kopko, a Harvard sophomore and Princeton freshman respectively.
The student-run business, which charges dorm dwellers anywhere from about $18 to $27 per student for a professional scrubbing, dusting and vacuuming, has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks after an editorial in the Harvard Crimson criticized the service for exacerbating the gap between social classes at the university. DormAid currently offers cleaning at Harvard and Boston University, and plans to expand to Brown, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
"By creating yet another differential between the haves and have-nots on campus, DormAid threatens our student unity," the editorial said. The Crimson editorial encouraged students to boycott the service.
Neither Chin nor Owusu said they shared the Crimson's opinion about class divides.
"I think there's already a class divide and there always will be a class divide. Adding a cleaning service wouldn't heighten it. It's already obvious," Owusu said.
In contrast, the DormAid founders insist that their company will improve economic circumstances at the universities that offer DormAid's services.
"My colleagues and I were very upset with the Crimson's piece, largely because we feel that the argument is economically backwards," Mike Kopko said, stating that DormAid pays its Harvard cleaners $12.85 per hour. He added that implementing the service would create relatively well-paying jobs for low-wage workers in the Boston area and provide students with business experience.
The prospect of a for-hire cleaning service also sparked some disagreement between the roommates.
"I don't have time to do my laundry on a normal day, because I have to work," Owusu said, adding that he would use the service "for sure."
Chin, however, said that tidying personal spaces should be left to students. "I think cleaning your room is something easy enough that it makes more sense just to do it yourself. You're too lazy to clean up your own damn room?" he said.
Co-founder Matt Kapko claims that DormAid now has a policy to mitigate these types of disagreements: if one student in a double wants the service and the other does not, the company charges the student the price that would normally be charged to clean a single, and only that student's belongings are put in order.
In addition to the economic benefits, the Kapko brothers highlighted the lack of other cleaning service options at their respective schools. This issue proved especially significant last year when an inebriated student urinated on a rug in Mike's dorm room, and the Harvard administration told him that he could not hire an outside carpet cleaning service to wash it.
Dartmouth has similar security policies. "We have a locked door policy so that when a pizza delivery person comes to the front door, that's as far as they're supposed to go. There would have to be some formal arrangement set up with this company and their staff and Dartmouth College," said Director of Residential Operations Woody Eckles.
Despite the Kopkos' arguments, some members of the Harvard community still believe that students should avoid the service. Alex Slack, a Harvard junior, had views similar to Chin's.
"Frankly, I wouldn't really respect anyone who got this DormAid thing. Suck it up and pick up your own room, I guess," Slack recently told the New York Times.
While there are no formal plans in place to bring DormAid to Dartmouth, Kopko said that the company would certainly look into expanding to Hanover in the future.
