By CHARLIE LYNN, Staff Writer
In an email to the student body in February, Dean of the College Martha Denney announced that Haverford would no longer offer on-campus storage for student belongings over the summer.
The decision was a result of concerns about the state of the storage spaces on campus. In her email, Denney wrote that “the poor condition of on-campus storage poses both safety and sustainability concerns. As the situation worsens with each passing semester, the status quo is no longer tenable.”
Added Dean of Student Life Michael Martinez, “The spaces that are currently used as storage are in a terrible state and full of unlabelled and in some cases seriously degraded items.”
Martinez wrote in an email to the Bi-College News, “We have been wrestling with this issue for many years, and unfortunately we have concluded that we cannot sustain a system in which belongings are safely stored and then reliably retrieved. To our knowledge, none of our peer institutions do either, which is why Haverford has been pretty much the outlier in offering on-campus storage up to this point.”
The college said it will work with student groups to determine new uses for what used to be storage spaces. The college also announced a partnership with the UPS Store of Bryn Mawr and Ultimate College Storage that would offer an alternative to on-campus storage for a fee.
Few others colleges in the area offer the service of free on-campus storage to their students. Neither Bryn Mawr nor Swarthmore provide on-campus storage facilities to their students.
Martinez explained that he understood that the transition will be inconvenient. Students with high financial need will be able to apply through the LIFTFAR program to store their belongings in a few designated places that will be set aside for them on campus.
“We are maintaining three spaces on campus for students with high financial need. We believe we have the capacity to manage this smaller scale storage effort and understand the importance of doing so for students with high financial need and extenuating circumstances.” wrote Martinez.
Student reaction to the policy change was mostly negative. Zachary Cho ‘20 described the change as “frustrating”. Cho, who is from South Korea, said he would probably store his belongings at the home of a family friend in New Jersey. Cho said that he had heard from many other students who were disappointed by the loss of on-campus storage.
The college envisions the newly free spaces could possible be used as study spaces or student lounges.
Nate Diehl, Director of Residential Life, said that Residential Life often receives request for more spaces for printing, similar to what currently exists in the basement of HCA 30. He envisioned that additional printing facilities could be placed in spaces opened up by the policy change.
