On-campus living and dormitory life are generally major staples of college in this nation.

However, this begs the question of how well the rooms are cleaned from resident to resident.

As stated by the HH4 – Personal Living Space Agreement, which Kent State students have to sign and agree to before they can call the halls their homes, room upkeep during the residency tenure is left up to the student. This includes sweeping, vacuuming and taking out trash on a consistent basis.

Not everyone who attends Kent State has lived in a dorm, although those that do might wonder if their room is as clean as it seems.

Chris Tankersley, interim associate director of Residential Facilities, was able to clear up some of the questions that may be on dorm-dwellers’ minds.

He said that dorms go through a deep cleaning during the summer hiatus. This involves shampooing carpets, dusting, an overall wipe-down of all furniture and a required damage evaluation.

This is different than the process during the school year because, as stated before, the upkeep is left up to the students and the janitorial staff only clean restroom areas.

“Hair-dye is the main issue,” Tankersley said, in describing the most common problem faced in summer cleaning. “The hair-dye stains usually wind up on the carpet and are costly because they require all of the carpeting to be replaced.”

Housekeeping Manager Dianna Penny was able to corroborate Tankersley. Prior to becoming the housekeeping manager, she was a supervisor and faced first-hand some of the issues related to preparing the halls for new residents.

Penny said that moving furniture and spots on the carpet are some of the most common issues.

“There is a lot of furniture to move from room to room,” Penny said. “The spots, most of the time, are from hair dye. And that means the entire carpet has to be removed.”

She also said that the summer cleaning process is a four-stage team cleaning process.

Stage one is removal of heavy trash, stage two is microfridge cleaning, stage three is vacuuming and moving furniture and stage four is an overall cleaning of the rooms.

When one signs up to live in a dormitory, they agree to minor cleaning of the room during their stay.

Preparation of the room may be left up to the Kent State custodial staff, and they do have provisions and procedures to provide the new resident with a clean room.

Contact William Kovach at [email protected].