ISU’s cash-to-card machines are too shoddy to be used as the only method of allowing the thousands of residence hall students to do their laundry.

The one in the Wallace-Wilson commons is broken at LEAST 50 percent of the time when I need to use it. I don’t try to do laundry on weekends either, when everyone else is!

I understand that they can break, so I will then try to use the “card-to-card” machine to transfer money straight from my checking account to my ISUCard, despite being forced to do it in $20 chunks. That’s not working, either.

I’ll walk over to the Knapp-Storms commons. Low and behold, the machine in Knapp-Storms has a dollar jammed in it. I’ll get in my car and drive to the Union and use the one there.

Risking a parking ticket, I run inside to add some money to my card, only to find that the machine there is out of order also.

I finally locate a functional machine at the Lied Rec. Center and am now the proud owner of clean socks.

Would it be too difficult to allow us to use quarters in addition to the cards?

No one ever told the students that quarters would not be able to be used, and that we’d be left at the mercy of machines which break down on an almost daily basis.

I’d be interested to see the statistics regarding how often they fix these machines and also exactly how badly these machines have to perform before they are supplemented by another method.

Seth H. Bokelman

Senior

Psychology