Monday, Nick Strnad, a sophomore letters and sciences major, hauled his duffel bag of laundry from Garrett Hall to the Harford Hall laundry room, only to discover all the machines were taken.

“It happens all the time,” Strnad said. “It’s awful.”

But staff from the Department of Residential Facilities is working to fix that.

As early as October, Residential Facilities plans to implement “laundry view,” a technology that will allow students to use the Internet to see how much time is left on each washer and dryer from the comfort of their dorm rooms, said Chris Moore, assistant director for Administrative Services. Students will also be able to reserve machines on the same website, he said.

Students said they are excited about this new program and hope it may help them avoid wasting time in the laundry room. Many students said Sundays are the worst day to do laundry in the dorms and described times when all the machines were full, leaving residents with no choice but to “just wait around,” said Angela Furnari, a sophomore psychology major.

But “laundry view” isn’t the only pilot program kicking off in eight laundry rooms across the campus this semester. Residential Facilities and Dining Services collaborated to give residents the added option of paying for the laundry machines with their Terrapin Express accounts.

“Students were chomping at the bit to use them,” Moore said.

Students were excited about the new swipe machines, which were installed in Cumberland, Elkton, Harford, Hagerstown, La Plata, Leonardtown, Queen Anne’s and Somerset Halls in the second week of September, Moore said. The pilot, running in eight of the 20 laundry rooms across the campus, involves half of the machines and population of students using the laundry rooms, Moore said.

“It’s a good idea,” said sophomore letters and sciences major Michael Goland. “It’s a lot easier. I put off doing laundry because finding quarters is a pain in the butt. Now it will get done more frequently.”

Goland, along with his fellow South Hill residents, did not know they could use Terrapin Express for washers and dryers, despite fliers in the laundry room explaining the pilot program.

“I had no idea,” Goland said. “I was scrambling for quarters before I came over here.” He said he was worried he might not have enough change to dry his clothes.

When asked why she was still using quarters, Furnari responded, “I just didn’t know about [the Terrapin Express option].”

Moore said he hopes the program helps stimulate student use of Terrapin Express.

“It’s such a big change, it may take a year to get people on board with it,” Moore said. “[Terrapin Express is] growing on campus. Maybe we will be a part of that growth.”

The students did notice, though, that washing machine prices were raised by a quarter before the fall semester began, now costing $1.50 per load. The university bought new energy-efficient washers and dryers, which are estimated to save about 2.5 million gallons of water a year.

The university will decide whether to keep the Terrapin Express option and web-monitoring system after judging how successful the pilot runs have been. Officials said they hope to have the new technology in every laundry room by the end of the 2008-2009 academic year.

“We wanted to streamline things to make things more convenient for students,” Moore said. “We wanted to give students a choice of card or coins and make an impact on the environment.”

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