The Woods Creek apartments seem daunting at first. Looking up at my building, Woods Creek West, on move-in day, I was frankly intimidated by the façade’s dark and somber colors. It is possible to dress up the inside of each apartment to make the building seem more homey and welcoming, but the antiquity of the East and West buildings can make this a difficult feat.

Peeling paint and faulty HVAC systems can severely test the comfort and appearance of the apartment units in these two buildings. All three of the Woods Creek apartment buildings were built in 1975, but the Central building underwent complete renovations in 2016.

Along with its renovation, the Central building was granted top-of-the-line washers and dryers that work without coin or Generals’ Debit imbursement. Not only can students do laundry in their living rooms in the Central building (as opposed to in the East and West building basements), they can also do it for free.

This is not the case in Woods Creek East and West. As in the freshman dorms, laundry costs $1.50 per load, per machine.

Assuming students do laundry once a week, they will end up spending around

$100 a year on washing and drying their

clothing.

If my four roommates and I were to all pitch in this sum, we would nearly be able to afford our own set of both a washer and dryer.

Adding to this bothersome cost is the problem of the washer and dryer units in East and West being so outdated and overused that one dryer cycle rarely dries clothes completely. Students often end up doling out another $1.50 to run the load again and have their clothing dried sufficiently.

The cost of living in Central is no different from that of living in East or West, yet students living in Central are not expected to spend an additional $100 on laundry.

This imbalance is simply unfair.

Although renovations are planned and partially in progress for East and West, in the interim, students in these buildings should not have to pay to do laundry.

This problem could be solved by altering the machines to remove the fee, or for each student to be awarded a certain stipend. Even if the appearance of the East and West apartment buildings certainly differ from that of Central, but the fee of laundry services should not.