Weekend cleaning a possibility, but Yale reluctant to pay

Yale College, Sunday night. Bathroom trash cans are overflowing. Stalls stink of vomit, courtyards are strewn with empty bottles and cigarette butts. Yale knows something needs to be done, but the Administration is reluctant to pay for any weekend cleaning service.

JULIA TIERNAN/YH COMING CLEAN: Yale's maintenance crews could only expand their services to include weekends if their budget were increased.

"It doesn't make sense for the college to be pristine during the week, but inundated with refuse on the weekends," Davenport master Gerald Thomas said. "The trash cans are burgeoning with garbage [on the weekends]. They're gross. In bad weather, it's a disaster."

As chair of the services committee of the Council of Masters, Thomas is looking for potential solutions to the trash problem. "We're working to try and get weekends covered," he said.

Currently, only the first-floor landings and trash cans of the colleges are cleaned during weekends. Other landings, bathrooms, and courtyards have to wait until the Monday cleaning crews make their rounds.

"We have catching-up work to do on Mondays, no doubt about it," Grounds Maintenance Director Roberto Meinrath said. "From the perspective that most parties, Frisbee games, et cetera, happen on the weekend, it makes sense to have [maintenance] service during the weekend."

Carlos Mercado, custodial director for the residential colleges, agreed. "Depending on the weekend, especially whether the students throw a party, [the lack of service] can cause problems." A supervisor, however, is always on duty to handle emergency problems like that puddle of puke that just missed the toilet. "So far this year, [emergency] calls have been light," Mercado noted. According to Vice President of Facilities Kemel Dawkins, expanding the maintenance budget is a possibility: "Yale has invested more in facilities in the last few years."

However, Vice President of Finance and Administration Joseph Mullinix explained that departments are "strongly encouraged to live within their [allotted] resources." Instead of asking the Administration for more money, "folks are encouraged to weigh priorities," Mullinix said.

If Yale had enough workers, it could simply prioritize--reassign some workers from weekdays to weekends. But according to Local 35 President Bob Proto, the University's stingy policies have made such a possibility unfeasible. "For the amount of square footage and the amount of students who live and learn here, the University is down to a skeleton crew in all aspects of its service," Proto said.

Meinrath added, "From a priority point of view, we first have to take care of the basics during the week. Right now, we can't afford to do more than that."

Because of Yale's contract with the Local 35 union, weekend cleaning wouldn't come cheap. Custodial and grounds workers already work 40-hour weeks; if they worked Saturday and Sunday, they would be paid time-and-a-half for the overtime hours and double-time for the seventh day. Because of these costs, Mercado speculated that if weekend workers were hired, they "would most likely be new hirees. It costs less to hire someone on straight time than to pay overtime." Still, even part-time workers receive hefty benefits.

Meinrath will present a proposal to the Council of Masters this month detailing four or five ways to offer weekend cleanup. "We would need additional budget resources to offer weekend service," he said. If the masters are convinced, they will probably appeal to Dawkins, though "they may lobby anyone, all the way up the line to the Provost," Mullinix said.

But when Yale needs to look good, it's willing to shell out cash. "There are special weekends during the year when [Yale pays] extra to have the grounds cleaned," Meinrath said. "The [Yale] Corporation meetings and Parents' Weekend, for example."

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