Where Does the Money Go? Trinity’s Breakdown of Basics

Kashmala Khan ’29

Contributing Writer

It is quite often said that college builds character, but at Trinity, it seems to build resilience. Between internet blackouts, water outages and what can only be described as laundry wars, students have begun to ponder: are we pursuing higher education or training for survival in a post-apocalyptic simulation?

The story begins at the network breakdown on Tuesday, when eduroam decided to give up on us (again). What began as the usual “Oh, it’s just down for a bit” turned into students embarking on a pilgrimage across campus, laptops in hand, desperately searching for a single smidge of connectivity. I personally began praying to deities in study spots, holding my phone up to the sky like Mufasa presenting Simba. You could tell who else shared my misery of being mid-assignment simply by the way they stared at their screens in sheer despair. All this on a weekday when assignments, meetings, quizzes and midterms wait for no one. 

But if the Wi-Fi debacle didn’t test your patience, the Great Water Outage of October surely did. On Oct. 22, multiple buildings, including the library, academic halls, and several first-year dorms, were left without running water. In simpler words: brushing your teeth became a field trip, and showering required scheduling strategy worthy of a military operation. Students filled bottles, rationed water like desert travelers and braved restroom trailers at sunrise—all on a school day. Trinity’s official email called it a “necessary repair.” The rest of us called it: “how to lose your mind before an 8 a.m. class.”

Aside from these events, I find it crucial to highlight a consistent facilities issue: the laundry room. Picture this: three first-year dorm buildings, one laundry room. Three dryers that are out of order, washing machines that leave your clothes drenched and a crowd of students operating on pure adrenaline and desperation. The moment your cycle ends, you sprint like an Olympic athlete to rescue your clothes before someone else yanks them out and dumps them on a dusty surface. Socks vanish mysteriously. The responses to work orders concerning the laundry room vanish even faster. There is no truer test of moral restraint than watching someone else throw your fresh laundry on the ground and deciding whether to commit a crime or write an opinion piece instead.

I would take a moment to iterate that, of course, the facilities staff deserve credit; they have been patient and quick to respond for the most part. The real question is not about them, it is about why these breakdowns keep occurring in the first place. For an institution with a price tag approaching $100,000 a year (after factoring in all those charmingly vague “general fees”), students should not have to compete for basic utilities like water, Wi-Fi or working dryers. At a certain point, it becomes impossible not to question where the money goes when entire residence halls, like Boardwalk and Park, have deteriorated so severely that they had to be shut down altogether, and have not reopened ever since.

I do not find it unreasonable to expect that tuition at an elite liberal arts college in the capital of Connecticut would guarantee, at minimum, functioning infrastructure. After all, if we can fund new architectural projects, glossy brochures and beautifully landscaped quads, surely we can fund consistent internet and functioning laundry facilities. The transparency around how student fees are allocated could greatly subside frustrations and build trust amongst the student community. 

Because truly no one is asking for luxury. We simply demand reliability. When the basics, like water and internet, fail repeatedly, it chips away at the student experience. Instead of stressing about midterms, students are worrying over finding the best study spots with reliable internet. 

Trinity students are indeed encouraged to be problem solvers. We adapt, improvise and endure. But we should not have to keep enduring the same avoidable inconveniences. These are not just small hiccups; they are symptoms of infrastructural neglect that deserve attention proportional to the tuition bill. 

Here is a modest proposal: let’s fix the foundation before expanding the facade. Let’s make reliability the new prestige. Because if there is one thing Trinity’s recent weeks have taught us, it is that our community deserves more than resilience. We deserve results. 

Until then, I’ll be in the laundry room—guarding my clothes as if they are state secrets.