Mizzou is about 3 weeks into laundry rack testing, and a little farther along in some areas than others. Here’s what’s happening.
Off Campus
Some Sustain Mizzou members took the last off-campus racks after general meeting demonstration on February 24th. I now have X disseminated within the off-campus realms of Columbia, MO. My friend and former Sustain Mizzou treasurer Jonathan Klamm, treats it like a science, recording drying time, frequency of use, and time to set up racks. I may take his records and distribute them to the other students involved.
Every one of the loaners have expressed a lot of enthusiasm toward air drying, like they just obtained their grandmother’s secret cookie recipe. The few concerns have been mild and easily overcome:
- Tumble dryers get rid of animal hair. Drying racks may even attract it (Jonathan might need another testing parameter). But hey, if you have a dog, chances are that after 5 minutes outside of the closet, nobody could tell a difference.
- It can’t handle more than 2 full loads! My friends Carrie and Becky live together and do laundry at the same time. Their clothes barely fit on their IKEA Y-airer after a laundromat run. Hanging clothes on various other places in their house can take care of the problem.
- Air-dried clothes feel stiffer than those from the dryer. Well yeah, they’re not getting knocked around by a metal drum of hot air. Two solutions: A.) Wear the clothes anyway and forget about it within a couple minutes, or B.) put them in the tumble sequence of the electric dryer for a couple minutes after they’re done air-drying.
On Campus
With 27 halls and over 6,000 residents, MU’s Department of Residential Life could potentially produce more frustrations than results. Fortunately, I work as a community advisor in South Hall, which gives me inside knowledge about who to approach and how to navigate the infrastructure. First, I contacted the Administrative Operations, and after meeting with the assistant director, presented my Residential Life Drying Rack Management Plan at their logistics meeting. You can click that link for the full document, but basically I outlined the goals and objectives of the project, its benefit to residents, its benefit to the University, a long- and short-term management plan, specifics on the three models we will test, and the personnel required to make this happen.
Energy-Use Display for MU's Hatch Hall
I decided to target an area of campus that participates in an energy saving competition called Mizzou Dashboard. Residents of Schurz, Hatch, and College Avenue halls may log in to this site at any time of the day to see in real-time how much energy they use. Yesterday I met with the Area Coordinator (who oversees those three buildings) and Area Administrative Supervisor (who runs their front desk operations). I need to get just a few things together before residents can finally start using the racks:
- A consent form that says A.) that their roommate feels comfortable with having a drying rack in the room and B.) that I can contact them at the end of the semester for a survey.
- A check-out log, which my friend Jeff who manages South’s front desk already made.
- Posters and brochures for the laundry rooms and front desks.
- An “rules and information” sheet to attach to the racks…somehow.
I hope to get all this finished and approved by the end of the week, so we can get the program started before March. If I were to do things differently, I would have started communication with official ResLife people last semester.
