SKILLS FOR LIFE
During Spring Clean-Up, Beltran and the other captains will have to hire and organize 400 employees, who will clean student rooms, occasionally throwing out squatters who have failed to clear out in time.
“Think about cleaning almost every single student dorm on campus in one week,” Orfitelli says of the first week of Spring Clean-Up.
A separate linen crew makes sure there are plenty of bedsheets for the alumni flocking to campus for reunions, a team called the Al Powers crew works to set up and tear down all the chairs and tables for events, and those groups don’t include the army of bellhops, bartenders, and baby-sitters that Dorm Crew will employ for reunions.
It’s a significant workload for Dorm Crew captains to manage, since they also coordinate storage for all the Houses as well as temporary housing for over 1,000 students that are staying at Harvard through Commencement.
Back in Adams, Beltran is sharing a year’s worth of cleaning-themed aphorisms she’s collected while working for Dorm Crew.
When she attacks the trouble spots on a sink—between the steel and the porcelain—with a grout brush and green sponge, she says, “It’s probably the easiest [part] to do but the hardest to do well.”
When she spritzes all the fixtures of the bath and sinks with glass cleaner, she stresses the significance of this procedure: “It really is the most important step, I think—it makes everything shine.” When she splashes water down the sides of the shower and onto the floor, she shrugs it off casually and remarks, “We’re called wet workers for a reason.”
Although she’s let Orange-Solve, Dorm Crew’s chosen multipurpose de-greaser, soak in the walls, she points out that there is not a lot of grime in this particular bathroom to wipe away from the shower walls.
“That’s because I used to work Dorm Crew, and I rinse off the shower when I’m done,” chimes in Ethan L. Murray ’05 from the common room of his senior suite. Some Dorm Crew skills stay with you for life.
—Staff writer Heloisa L. Nogueira can be reached at nogueira@fas.harvard.edu.