"Steven, that's the guy's name, comes the same time every Friday," she says. "Our bathroom's always clean--my roommate even leaves him candy sometimes."

A Tight Labor Market

Last year many House bathrooms went uncleaned because of a shortage of Dorm Crew workers. Wolfreys says Dorm Crew's staffing problems stemmed from a $2,000 financial aid increase and the economy's prosperity.

"A lot of students can make considerably more money doing things like web design...and they can do that from their rooms," he said.

Because of the lack of students interested, many Houses outsourced their cleaning to FMO and UNICCO, a nationwide maintenance and janitorial company. Some bathrooms in Kirkland, Winthrop, Leverett, Eliot, Lowell, Currier, Quincy and Mather Houses are currently still done by FMO and UNICCO.

But Dorm Crew cleans some rooms in each House, and in Pforzheimer, Cabot and Adams House, as well as Claverly Hall and the Yard dorms, Dorm Crew cleans every bathroom.

Sherina Feliciano-Santos '02, one of the head captains of Dorm Crew, says the organization has grown by recruiting more first-year students for Fall Cleanup, a five-day program which pays students to prepare the dorms for their new inhabitants.

Dorm Crew had four times as many first-years doing Fall Cleanup as last year, according to Wolfreys.