Students Struggle with LC’s Strict Move-Out Schedule

It is the end of the year. We are stressed about finals, excited to be done and ready for summer. But if you live on campus like me, we have an added and completely unnecessary problem: we have to move out of our dorms.

Due to the lack of on-campus storage available, most students have begun using Dorm Room Movers, a full-service moving, storage and shipping service, during the move-out process. Lewis & Clark’s partnership with Dorm Room Movers is extremely beneficial, but there are ways in which the company’s service could vastly improve. First of all, we have to call and order our boxes within 15 days of move-out. The boxes then take another week or so to arrive, leaving us with less than a week to pack our entire lives into those big orange and white boxes while also concentrating on our studies.

The scheduling for the pickup is problematic, too. The company sets the time at which our things will be picked up, with no consideration of class schedules. We are given a huge time slot in which potential arrival could occur, which usually results in a call alerting us that the movers could arrive at any minute. If we have class, we have to ask a friend or our roommate to wait in the room in case the movers arrive. Last year, they were behind schedule and did not arrive until an hour after my set time slot had ended —  I made my friend wait for nothing. An even greater annoyance is that once they text us that they are outside, we have only a few minutes to respond before they start frantically calling us; meanwhile, we are trying to drag all our things down the hall to meet them. I understand that it is stressful and difficult for them to stay exactly on schedule when they are trying to get everyone moved out, but what about our scheduling limits? Should we not be using our last few days to get other things done instead of waiting for our boxes to be picked up?

There is also the matter of LC’s scheduling decisions, which further restrict the window we have to complete the move-out process. This year, our last official day of classes is a Thursday. Reading days are the next two days, one of which is a Saturday (this is a whole separate problem that I take issue with); finals then take over our calendars that following Monday through Thursday. All this is to say that for non-graduating students, we have to move out by 3 p.m. the day after finals end.

How can we be expected to study adequately for finals and also pack everything up in less than a week? No matter how fast we move, packing takes time and there is no avoiding it. Studying for finals takes just as much time, and could be arguably more important. I found it extremely difficult to concentrate on my schoolwork because I was trying to finish getting everything packed up and return all my textbooks on time.

I believe that LC should give its students a few extra days to reduce the rush of an extremely stressful situation. Rather than requiring their undergraduate population to balance preparing for the most important days of the semester and packing everything up for the arrival of the summer months, the college should be considerate of our needs by extending the move-out timeline.