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Princeton saves $300K with early move-in policy
Published: Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
The University saved roughly $300,000 by implementing a new move-in policy this summer, Director of Campus Life Initiatives Amy Campbell and Assistant Vice President for Facilities Chad Klaus said at a USG meeting Sunday night.
“We speculated that it ...
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300 k? I don't think so. The buildings do not take that much to run per week. Plus, once the rooms are professionally cleaned for move-in, they are done for the year because that is the students' year long room, so that isn't a saved cost at all. Could the figure of 300k be at least broken down in the article, or proven somehow? sounds like an excuse for something that annoyed everyone
also, there is no proof that the university would have spent 300k if students had moved in early
You previous posters should really read the article - it says most of the savings come from "from maintenance having more time to prepare dorms not used for temporary housing for the academic year." I've stayed on campus over the summer in past years, and I've basically seen the maintenance crews work ridiculous hours in the days right before move-in. I remember talking to my building's janitors, and they told me the janitorial staff might pull upwards of 90-100 hour weeks (six-seven days a week) to clean out and rearrange rooms following the summer camps. That's like 50-60 hours of overtime. Other specialized maintenance crews (plumbing, construction) may pull less hours but their base rate pay and hence overtime pay is much, much higher.
Yes, the 300k is still a high number and I agree we should ask for a more specific breakdown. But, I wouldn't immediately toss it out in disbelief.
JP must not understand the concept of a counterfactual, unless one can prove that the university would have spent 300 thousand dollars if students had moved in early (which is impossible because the event did not happen) then one cannot prove that any savings was caused by students not moving in early
@Anonymous, @correlation, give this the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, any such claim to having saved $X amount of money can be attacked with the same "counterfactual" argument, so that argument loses its applicability since such a claim to saving money can, actually, make sense. Perhaps they compared to the money spent previous years.
Also, this is they way departments are *supposed* to save money. Though we were allowed to arrive early in previous years (thus setting a precedent), the housing department made sure that we were aware that the policy had changed. They did not wait for us to arrive and then fine us an exorbitant amount of money - instead they informed us that the policy and its enforcement had changed, and thereby saved money the right way.
That said, now there is a precedent for housing to release the actual dollar amount saved through its cost-cutting (and unfortunately sometimes fund-raising) programs. We are very curious how much money the new paint-enforcement-policy raise, as explained in the previous article's comments. The housing department has already given the total amount for another program, so they must release the total amount for the paint program (when asked: this is where you step in, Daily Prince) or the situation will look incredibly suspicious.
@everyone:
The point is that the cleaning crews doing "ridiculous hours to set up" as you say, would do those whether the move in was one week earlier or one week later. They are not setting up "extra" dorms, but rather simply the dorms that they would need to be setting up one week later. Early move in had students moving into their very own dorms. Because of this, it is not clear where exactly the 300k is saved.
In addition to this, when my student group had early move in we were able to spend the time rehearsing our performances that the University asks us to put on within the first few days of frosh week. Not having early move in makes that much more difficult, I had to move twice and it was a waste of time. Don't ask groups to come early to make freshman week vibrant and fun for freshmen, and then treat us like crap just because we aren't athletes.
Maintenance probably gets paid extra (probably time and a half) for hours not part of their regular work schedule.
The same amount of work had to be done, but you save money when you don't have to pay 50% extra