Pockets may feel a little lighter for Missouri Southern’s residence hall students this semester.

Not because of a tuition hike or hang-ups with the Financial Aid office on campus, either. Starting this fall, the University has ditched its formerly coin-operated washers and dryers in the Mays Student Life Center.

For the sake of student convenience, all new units have been brought in, and the best part? No more lugging around quarters.

“Realizing that our machines were getting a little bit older, and students didn’t necessarily have a lot of money on them,” Director of Residence Hall Housing Josh Doak said. “Or they’d have to wait two weeks until Mom and Dad could send money or they went home, I started looking into trying to find different systems as far as getting their laundry taken care of. “

Doak said his research led him to the idea of instead of including the cost in each student’s housing bill, rather than requiring students to pay in quarters to use the laundry machines.

“Typically, in the past, if you had two loads of laundry to do, it would cost you anywhere from about five to seven dollars to do it,” he said. “But we add $30 a semester, $30 for the fall and $30 for the spring, into the housing fees.”

Doak says the reaction of the students to the change has been very positive, and it has also helped get more students into the SLC.

“Now, coming in here about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we usually have several students hanging out on the couches, watching TV while they’re doing laundry or playing ping-pong,” he said.

“The traffic has been significantly increased, and just the flow into that facility has been increased. It’s been a great thing. I haven’t heard a student complain about it yet. You know you’re doing something right when no one complains.”

“I think the new laundry facilities are a huge improvement,” senior mass communications major Kisa Clark said. “Not only are they nice new machines, they no longer require quarters, which is always a big hassle. Personally, I never used the campus laundry facilities until this year.”

Doak said the plan has been so popular that he has even had commuter students inquire about buying into the system in order to use the laundry facilities.

Due to limited space however, he said that is not something the University is able to do at this time.