In response to recent restrictions on residence hall laundry room hours and to increase student involvement on campus issues, the NIU’s Students’ Relation Coalition has established itself as a communication link between students and administrators.

The coalition was created in late February by Willie Fowler, RHA vice president of programming, and Joe Scheidler, RHA vice president of administration, to work “as a communication link between the RHA and the organizations of the campus,” said Fowler.

Fowler states the scope of the committee is “to coordinate and inform other student groups and organizations campus-wide on issues and concerns pertaining to student, administrative actions and regulations concerning students, with the intent to increase student involvement within those issues and concerns.”

e also specified the short-term goals for the rest of this semester as wanting “to reinstate resident hall’s laundry room hours; to increase student voice in the housing office; to be informed of actions that will be taken by housing before they take place, so we can have student input and to look into the judicial policy and code of NIU that regulate students and adjust to meet current needs of students.”

Dan Clayton, core member of the coalition, said one of the bigger issues of concern is laundry room hours. Dorm laundry rooms previously were open 24 hours, but recently were restricted.

“The student leaders should have been notified about (the action of closing the laundry rooms). Instead, we woke up and saw the signs on the windows of the front desk. It is the students that are allocating money, so the students should have some say on the issue,” Fowler said.

“At this time, the housing office has a totalitarian, autonomous control over the students in the dorm and we want to know why they have this power,” Clayton said.

Clayton said he is working on getting the gas reports of the residence halls, to document the money coming in and the money going out of the laundry rooms. “Some of the offices are questioning our motives and are reluctant to give us information,” he said.

Possible solutions suggested by the coalition are to let the individual residence hall design its own system of laundry room use, Fowler said. He suggested the alternative of restricting hours on weekends from Thursday night to Saturday night. “This is basically the time when the damage had been done to the machines in the laundry room.”