
Zoe Berg
This Sunday, the Yale College Council passed a policy proposal that would provide a $10 laundry stipend to students at Yale.
The proposal, sponsored by Jonathan Edwards senator Orah Massihesraelian ’26, hopes to combat the $1.50 cost per load Yale laundry wash and dry machines demand. Additionally, the proposal hopes to alleviate the financial burden such costs pose to first-generation and low-income students on campus.
Massihesraelian said that she has observed many students struggle to pay for laundry. Over the past few years, the YCC has lobbied to convince the Yale administration to alleviate the costs of laundry for students, yet there has been no change. As a member of the laundry committee last year, Massihesraelian helped organize an initiative that directed YCC funds towards the distribution of laundry pods and dryer sheets across campus.
“For a long time now, I’ve been thinking about how a big problem is just funding laundry,” Massihesraelian said. “And even though I do believe that the funding should be coming more directly from the University, I thought that it would be helpful for the YCC to be sort of a stepping stone to serve as a source of financial relief.”
Yale has a contract with CSC ServiceWorks, Yale’s laundry service provider, until 2026. Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis previously told the News that the Yale College Dean’s Office has insufficient funds for free laundry.
To bring attention to the initiative, the YCC created a “Free and Clean Laundry Status Report,” generated from surveys and feedback from the Yale community.

The report found that 54 percent of participants claimed to spend $10-30 a month on laundry. 28.2 percent answered that they “very frequently” see broken laundry machines in on-campus laundry rooms, and 37.7 percent felt “somewhat dissatisfied” with the cleanliness of Yale’s laundry machines.
Olivia Tomblin-Pavlovich ’28 is a first year living on Old Campus. There, she uses the washers and dryers in Farnam Hall, which she describes as “not that great.”
Tomblin-Pavlovich believes that Massihesraelian’s passed proposal, if adopted by administration, would have an invaluable impact on the inefficiency of the Yale laundry system.
“I think it’s a great idea because, frankly, the machines eat up your money,” Tomblin-Pavlovich said. “I know, personally, that there’ve been laundry errors where I’ve had to put my stuff in the dryer more than once and it hasn’t dried, so that’s extra money that I’m funneling in. [Laundry] is an unnecessary cost that builds up over your four years at Yale and it’s just a big problem.”
In order to receive the stipend, students must fill out a Google Form asking questions about campus residence, first-generation, low-income status, typical monthly laundry expenses, and whether or not students believe Yale should subsidize laundry costs for students. For the first 200 students who complete the form, the YCC would provide laundry reimbursement at a rate of $10 per student.
At this past Sunday’s YCC meeting, Massihesralian proposed a variety of other laundry-related solutions, such as not renewing Yale’s contract with CSC or incorporating laundry fees into rooming and board fees.
Massihesraelian says that with the stipends, she hopes to create a short term impact of helping students in little ways. Long term, though, she hopes that the stipends bring attention to the issue.
“The long-term goal is to get administration to either disaffiliate with CSC or demand better service for CSC so that there’s not constantly broken machines and damaged goods,” Massihesraelian said.
Yale’s current contract with CSC Serviceworks will end in 2026.