So it’s 7 p.m. and you have to do laundry, but you don’t have any quarters and your friends don’t either. By this time, the bank is closed and now you have no way of getting quarters. This would be the time where you would think to yourself, “Man, I wish we had a card that we could just swipe to do our laundry.”

Many students at Castleton State College constantly complain about having to get quarters in order to wash and dry their clothing. Even though the bank is a mere tenth of a mile away from the campus, they say it’s still a pain to have to go and exchange cash for coins.

Some students on campus say it would be much easier if the campus had laundry machines that could scan their School ID cards and deduct money from that. Students at other colleges around the area including UVM pay for their laundry through their room and board. Others, like Lyndon State, operate laundry with coin-operated machines like Castleton.

“It’s very convenient being able to swipe a card to do laundry instead of getting quarters,” stated a UVM student government official who asked that his name not be used.

Each UVM student has 100 loads of laundry put on their ID cards. Every time they swipe their cards to wash or dry their clothing, a load of laundry gets deducted from the amount on the card.

Middlebury College students on the other hand are in the same boat as students at Castleton, in the sense that they have to pay $1.25 in quarters per load.

Castleton Director of Residence Life Dennis Proulx is the man who handles the business with the company supplying the washer and dryer machines, Mac Gray.

“Every 10 years we renew our contract with Mac Gray and sometimes with that renewal comes new machines. We are now on year six of our contract,” Proulx said.

A universal card is one of the possibilities in the near future. A universal card would be a card that you get separately from your ID card that you use for food, laundry and even vending services, Proulx said.

The only issues with that are the changes in cost, but it would definitely be much more convenient with students instead of having to go and get quarters. Aramark, the vendor that supplies food for Castleton students on campus, would also have to agree along with Mac Gray to get a universal card that would work on food and laundry.

But despite the potential complications of adopting a new card system, students seem to like the idea.

“It would just be so much easier and convenient for everyone on campus to have the universal card,” said Jared Skliba, a Castleton freshman