With the advent of spring, Nick Smaligo ’05 awakens to see the morning sun and a pasture of grass outside his townhouse window. Sounds rustic, doesn’t it?
But inside, old papers pile on tipped cups and dried tea bags stick to a mixture of dirty and clean laundry, some not even his.
For Smaligo, a clean house comes secondary to his schoolwork, but he is adamant that he would never pay for house cleaning.
“I don’t have the money and would feel like more of a spoiled brat than I already am,” he said.
DormAid, a room-cleaning service created by Co-CEOs Michael Kopka, a sophomore at Harvard University and his brother Matthew Kopka, a freshman at Princeton University, cleans college students’ dorm rooms at Boston University and Harvard.
“We started the business with the exact intent of helping kids live a clean and healthier life,” said Michael Kopka during an interview with KDKA radio in Philadelphia.
The service has recently come under crossfire after the Harvard Crimson, the Harvard University student newspaper, published an editorial calling for the boycott of the company.
“By creating yet another differential between the haves and have-nots on campus, DormAid threatens our student unity,” said the newspaper’s editorial.
“We urge the student body to boycott DormAid,” it said near the end of the editorial.
The company has been criticized for widening the socioeconomic gap between the students who can afford the service and the ones who cannot.
One student went so far as to call the service “elitist” because it is only available to those who can afford to pay for it.
If a similar company came to Fairfield, would students use the service?
As Fairfield’s tuition prices rise to close to $40,000, and with 67 percent of students receiving financial aid, how many students can afford additional cleaning services?
“Since I have no income, paying someone to clean is not an option,” said Ryan Farias ’05, Smaligo’s roommate.
“Someday when I actually have a job I might hire a cleaning person, but now I can’t afford it,” he said.
Smaligo added that if one of the purposes of a university is to learn responsibility, the usage of such a service might counteract what a university is trying to accomplish.
“I don’t really think it is a wise service for a university to encourage, because it accustoms students to unrealistic expectations about the lifestyle that may await them after graduation,” said Smaligo.
DormAid is expanding soon to Brown University, Princeton University and University of Pennsylvania.
During the interview with KDKA, Michael Kopka said the company contracts for the cleaning and outsources the work to professionals.
Students seem to think it is a matter of personal preference.
“I am extremely organized and don’t need someone to clean for me, but I wouldn’t mind using it on my housemates’ messes,” Lauren Correia ’05 said.
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