Dear Ethicist,
My residence hall has very few washers and dryers and I barely have time to do my laundry due to my busy schedule. It is late at night and I need to go to bed, but all the washers are full. One of the washers has been done for several minutes now and the person to whom the clothes belong has not yet come down to move them to the dryer. I would normally just come back later, but I have been working very hard in school and barely have enough time to eat dinner, let alone do a load of laundry. I do not want to be disrespectful by messing with this person’s personal items, but on the other hand, I live here too and I don’t think it’s that hard to set a timer and come downstairs a little before it ends. Is it ethical to move this person’s clothes out of the washer so that I can wash my clothes?
As students required to live on campus all four years, it is our job to be as respectful as possible as we are all living where we work, study, eat and sleep. This creates a unique situation as our social and academic lives are inextricably tied to our personal lives. Living with our peers means maintaining respect for one another while trying to make everyone’s lives as comfortable as possible. You have found yourself in a situation where your time and comfort are at stake. The living situation at Centre has made it so you cannot carry out a simple chore on your own time. Instead, your time is being taken advantage of by another person. You are tired and there are many things you could be doing with this precious time. On the other hand, I’m sure the reason you’re writing this is because you feel a certain sense of empathy towards this hypothetical person and subscribe to the earlier statement that we must work together to provide a comfortable living space for everyone. Your ideas about maintaining this respectful community are being tested because it is coming at the expense of your own comfort and someone is not holding up their end of this unspoken agreement. Perhaps you have been the other person in this situation before. Everyone has forgotten to press start on their alarm or fallen asleep and you know the sinking feeling that will hit this person when they come downstairs to see their wet laundry sitting in a sopping heap on the table.
In this case, you must make a judgment call that maintains the necessary balance between providing for others’ needs and your own. If there is an empty dryer, you should always try and put the stranger’s clothes in it. This being said, there is also a question of privacy. Would this person feel a sense of violation when they come down to find that someone has messed with their unmentionable items? Would it be different depending on whether the clothes belonged to a boy or a girl? These are questions that do not have one catch all answer. I would suggest giving the person a fifteen minute grace period before making this decision. At that point, I think that it is safe to assume that the person has come to terms with the possibility that their laundry might get moved in their absence. While it may seem frustrating to be taking up someone else’s responsibility, it is one small thing you can do to accommodate your peers. If there is a situation in which you must put your needs before someone else’s for your own mental health, I do not think that doing so will wreak havoc upon the residence hall. However, I will impress upon you these ideas about maintaining respect in these situations, because if everyone starts disregarding others like this it will cause a ripple effect and pretty soon, the place where you work, eat, sleep, and socialize will no longer be as safe as it once was. If they have not done their part and been an accommodating member of this small community, then you do not necessarily owe them the same respect, however, granting them the same grace and patience that you would appreciate will only benefit everyone.