At Goshen College, a group of people work their way through every building on campus from Monday through Friday: sweeping, mopping, dusting, wiping, emptying and neatening. Custodians report for duty as early as 5 a.m. to clean and maintain every classroom, bathroom, housing area and other spaces in each building on campus.

Christy Farley oversees a staff of 12 in the custodial department. Farley is responsible for ensuring all supplies are ordered and stocked, work orders are completed, cleaning duties are completed for each building and summer schedules are coordinated. 

Careful scheduling is needed to clean for various events from the Music Center, Umble Center to the Church-Chapel. “It can be stressful at times. We have to cover a lot of events on campus with custodial work,” Farley said.

The custodians begin with their shifts with the academic buildings from 5-9 a.m. Then transition to housing.

Courtney Crum, the lead custodian, is responsible for the Kratz residence hall. She cleans a total of three bathrooms, three hallways and one stairwell. “Working by myself to do one bathroom [takes] about 40 minutes,” Crum said. “Then another 10 minutes to vacuum the hallway.” 

Olga Demchuk, assistant custodial supervisor, is responsible for Yoder and Kulp. “Yoder is bigger because it has two bathrooms and it’s a double hallway, so it takes about an hour and a half plus the hallway, and one side of the stairs,” she said. 

Custodians hold meetings at the start of the year with resident assistants and resident directors to discuss how to maintain a clean space with 391 students living on campus. 

Depending on whether everyone takes personal responsibility, the workload can be less — or more. For example, students are asked to take their personal dorm room trash out to the dumpsters themselves. “One thing we do see often is that [students] pile up their trash cans in the restrooms up against the wall, so those who use the bathroom eventually just throw their trash on the floor,” Crum said. “It becomes very unsightly.”

Farley said trash and waste can pile up in other places as well. “We see food in the drinking fountains, clogging the drains, [which] will overflow onto the floor,” she said. A typical food that often clogs the drains is ramen, but it can also include items like salad and mushrooms.

Drains can also back up in the bathroom. “People try to wash their dishes using the bathroom sink, where the food ends up just plugging [itself] up,” Crum said. 

Both Crum and Farley suggested that students use the kitchens available in the connector and on the first floor of Yoder. “Kulp is different; they do have their own kitchen on each floor,” Farley said, “more of the sloppy food can be flushed down the toilet to not clog the sinks in the bathrooms.”

Demchuk suggested specific tasks for students to do to help alleviate the extra work custodians encounter: “I would like students to close their curtains when they’re showering so the water doesn’t flood the floor, and to clean up their hair when it falls out to keep the drain from clogging,” she said.

Eddie Mayorga, a custodian with 25 years of service, works on the male floors of Yoder. He has enjoyed working here at the college, as it has given him the opportunity to learn more English and to interact more with the rest of staff on campus and students.

Mayorga said, “Me gustaría que [los estudiantes] colaborarán un poquito más en los baños y en los pasillos, que no los mantuvieran sucios, que cooperaran un poquito más.” In other words, he said: “I would like for [the students] to help a little more in the bathrooms and the hallways to not leave it so dirty, for them to cooperate a little more.”

Farley looks out for the well-being of her staff, just as she does for the upkeep of the campus. “Custodians work really hard, and there are things that could be prevented that make their job even harder,” she said. “We want to keep them here. We want this to be a nice place for them to work at as well, but it seems that things that are very easy to do, [the students] are not doing them, and it impacts custodians greatly.”