Dear McMaster students:

There have been an extremely large number of replies to a thread revolving around an email recently sent out by Housing and Conference Services. (one of which is seen here: http://www.macinsiders.com/showthread.php/stop-searching-fridge-29443.html?t=29443&hi ghlight=fridge

Most of you are probably familiar with the topic of this email: STUDENTS ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO BRING PERSONAL FRIDGES INTO RESIDENCE. Instead, the students are expected to proceed as follows (should they desire to have a mini fridge while staying in residence):

1. The student will place an order for a selected refrigerator unit on the Coldex website.
2. The student will then pre-order via a mailed-in cheque or online with a VISA or Mastercard.
3. Delivery of the unit will be made by the Coldex company themselves, in theory, before the student moves into their residence building.
4. A $25 deposit is returned to the student after the unit is picked up at the end of the year (providing that it is spotlessly clean and in good working order). Note that the deposit is only returned after 6-8 weeks.. and IF AND ONLY IF a "deposit request form" is completed online.

The fridges are between $120-140 for both semesters (there does not seem to be an option for only one semester, which would be convenient for co-op students who live in residence for only half a year). There are also televisions, freezers and microwaves available. Microwaves and hot plates have not been allowed in traditional-style residences for an extended period of time now; perhaps this should be clarified further by Housing and Conferencing Services if McMaster students are to be ordering products from Coldex.

In any case, the Inter-Residence Council (IRC) is currently contacting Housing and Conference Services regarding this issue. The Council was NOT informed of this new policy being introduced to the residence system. The Council was NOT consulted regarding the implementation of such a policy. The IRC found out just as the rest of the McMaster student body found out: through the very email this morning which sparked the very thread I was referring to at the beginning of this post.

We will be updating everyone on this thread as to any developments in this situation. The lack of consultation may very well have been a simple oversight; however, the student body has indeed voiced its opinions on this topic. As such, the Inter-Residence Council will respond accordingly.

We are doing all we can to resolve this issue and voice the opinions of the student body. The McMaster student body has been heard - now what has been heard will be acted upon.

Sarrah Lal
Vice-President Communications
Inter-Residence Council

As many others have voiced, this is ridiculous. If they are so worried about the fridges being energy compliant, perhaps a deal could be made so that newer fridges (i.e. less than 3 years old) could be permitted?

Just an idea, as i'm willing to bet the university won't suddenly change their minds..

Originally Posted by Hasselman

As many others have voiced, this is ridiculous. If they are so worried about the fridges being energy compliant, perhaps a deal could be made so that newer fridges (i.e. less than 3 years old) could be permitted?

Just an idea, as i'm willing to bet the university won't suddenly change their minds..

It's a lot easier to ban all personal fridges than to check the age of every single one.

Originally Posted by jhan523

It's a lot easier to ban all personal fridges than to check the age of every single one.

and a lot more profitable, for the private company supplying the fridges and presumably for McMaster as well.

Reasons for the COLDEX rentals would be to ensure energy-efficiency yes, however other considerations which have been raised are as follows:

-Safety of the units themselves: any damages sustained to the fridges over time or with use could become safety hazards.
-Safety for those who are moving them into the residence: lifting and carrying up numerous floors or through hallways
-Pests being able to make their way into the buildings: being transported into the buildings via the fridges, after being stored away for the summer

Originally Posted by sarrah66

Reasons for the COLDEX rentals would be to ensure energy-efficiency yes, however other considerations which have been raised are as follows:

-Safety of the units themselves: any damages sustained to the fridges over time or with use could become safety hazards.
-Safety for those who are moving them into the residence: lifting and carrying up numerous floors or through hallways
-Pests being able to make their way into the buildings: being transported into the buildings via the fridges, after being stored away for the summer

What guarantee does the university and students have that COLDEX fridges won't become safety hazards and won't have pests in them? Their fridges are certainly going to be stored somewhere over the summer. In fact, as a company whose only goal is profit, COLDEX would have an incentive to reuse fridges for as many years as possible and to store them as cheaply as possible. I would argue that COLDEX fridges are more likely to be out of service than privately owned fridges. I bet most students would buy their fridges in first year and so they'd be at most 4 years old by the time they leave res and would likely have an average age of 2 years or less.

As anecdotal evidence of COLDEX's prior practices, I refer you to a post by one of the students you represent as an IRC VP:
"Yea seriously this is sooo stupid! i was in a triple room in my 1st year and because we were in triple, we were provided with a fridge from coldex...it was a pain in the *** cuz we had to change it 3 times!!....our food kept rotting cuz they never provided us with a fridge tht was in "good working order"...this is so frustrating!!"
http://www.macinsiders.com/showpost....&postcount=128

If lifting and carrying the fridges is a concern, perhaps the IRC could work out a program to have more hand trucks in place for move in so students/parents don't have to carry in fridges, but can move them the same way COLDEX presumably does.

There's no need to be apologetic towards Housing and Conference Services, they've totally avoided proper process for consulting students and are acting, not in the best interests of students, but the best interests of the profitability of a private company and the University with complete disregard for students.

I suppose from McMaster's point of view it would be easier to monitor the quality of the fridges if they were all coming from one place. If something was off, they would know where to go, right? I would hope that Coldex keeps their fridges in order, since rotting food isn't something you want in the refrigerator business.

Still, I am a bit disappointed that the school didn't seem to consider that this decision merited at least a notice, preferably a discussion, with the inter residence council. :/

Currently it's not the students and their parents that take fridges to rooms, it's the job of the Welcome Week Reps (not the IRC either, I`m pretty sure IRC does traffic direction during this and it`s basically all res reps doing the stuff carrying, at least for the first year move in days). While I suppose this could be a safety issue, I agree that if Mac is so concerned about this, they could always attempt to get more help to help with this. Or, if they`re so concerned about their student volunteers, they could make the same sort of statement about fridges as I`ve heard for mattresses in the past: that although they can be brought, the reps won`t take them up. So then if a student wants a fridge it`s up to them and their family to get it up to their room.

But really, with the coldex fridges, I assume some of the cost must count as a delivery fee. As said, Mac could instead hire people to assist with bring the fridges if they really think it`s such a danger. They could also hire people who could inspect the fridges that are being brought in during move in, and only in the event that they see a fridge that is clearly unsafe, unclean (pest infested), or so old that there`s no way it is energy wise would they need to refuse to allow that fridge inside. If they must, they could even make a check list and refuse to bring more than one fridge to a room (I know it`d be a pain if you aren`t rooming with someone that you already know, but as long as you get some contact info from them you could make an effort to arrange with them as to who will buy a fridge or if you want to split the cost of renting). While this would cost them money, I`m sure it wouldn`t cost 140$ per traditional residence room`s worth of money. I`d rather they insist on adding a small fee for this service than have to pay 140$ for something I already own.

dsahota it is still important that students know exactly what Mac`s reasoning for the fridge ban is, not for making excuses for Residence Admission, but in order to be able to think of solutions that can deal with the problems they claim personal fridges pose. The more we know about why Mac did this, the better we can argue against it.

Another thing that`s crossed my mind is that, in an attempt to be eco friendly by saving energy, we`re going to be wasting a lot more food. Perhaps others would disagree with me, but as a small enough girl I often find that the portion sizes, particularly at Bistro, are big enough that I`m frequently bringing leftovers back to my room. If I had no fridge to store these in, I`d need to instead throw out what I can`t eat. This not only leaves us with more garbage to dispose of (both the food and any container if I got it to go), but will cost students more money as I`ll now need to buy something new when I get hungry rather than being able to finish my meal from earlier. This applied just as easily to people bringing food from home. Without a fridge, we can`t exactly store food in our rooms, which means that all of our food will have to come from Mac (or when we go off campus to eat).

A related issue is the fact that many of mac`s food services are not open all the time. On weekend`s only Commons (presumably centro will follow the same pattern next year) and minimac are open on weekends, and even during the week most of the others have far shorter hours. For specialty foods, such as vegetarian food from Bridges, the only way to be able to eat this on the weekend is to buy it ahead of time and store it in a fridge (I'm pretty sure they even sell refrigerated meals there for this very reason). If a student doesn't have a fridge, then they can't have these foods at times when the place on campus that serves it isn't open. This leaves us with extremely limited options for weekends, and for late at night.

Now the arguments related to people being able to keep food can obviously be counter with the argument that all residences do have fridges in the common kitchens. Anyone who's ever lived in a residence knows that food does go missing from these, but that one's a little harder to prove conclusively to McMaster. Granted I'm sure we do have boatloads of student testimonies that could say that the common fridges can't really be trusted. Hopefully we can get them to see that in a traditional residence not having a fridge in your room is the same as not having a fridge at all.

Another thing I kind of wondered about in the case of students not having their own fridge and using the common ones is alcohol storage. Students of legal drinking age are allowed to have alcohol in their rooms (just with restrictions on kegs and bottles). Are students now going to be allowed to keep this in the common fridge, or are we merely expected to not have cold alcoholic drinks? Keeping non-alcoholic drinks in the common fridge also poses a bit of an inconvenience, since we'd now need to leave our rooms to go get it.

And I'm sure there are lots of people like my who keep A LOT of pop and juice and stuff in their fridge. There are also people that keep a lot of food in their fridge, because even in a traditional res we have kitchens in which we can cook for ourselves. If we suddenly expect a lot more people to have using the common fridge as their only option, this could mean that there suddenly won't be much room in the fridges. If they say 'then those people should rent a fridge', but then how is the fact that there is a common fridge even relevant to this issue? The same could also be said for people with food allergies. They might not want to risk having their food in a fridge where it could come in contact with something that they are allergic to. This again forces them to spend the money to rent a fridge.

Mac should not allow anyone to be in a position where they might be absolutely required to rent a fridge, since the prices of renting these fridges are nearly the cost of buying one. To rent a fridge like the one I already own, I''ll need to pay 140$ (25$ of which I MIGHT get back, if they deem it clean enough and I take the time to fill out a form). The thing is, I bought mine new for 150$. How does it make sense to charge me the price of a fridge when I don't get to keep it when the year is over? While this might be OK for someone who is only living in residence one year and would have no where to store a fridge in the future, for anyone who is going to live in residence for more than one year or might want a fridge in the future, it makes absolutely no sense to rent, especially for people who already own them.

I`m going to try and finish my little rant/essay up with the fact that, while I've tried to present arguments as to why Mac should never put in this policy and how they could fix the issues they claim arise from personal fridges, there is one argument referring specifically to next year that makes this point moot: the procedure through which they made this decision and alerted students and student organizations alike. By this point in the year, in coming first years have already had many opportunities to get information about McMaster, both online and by visiting Mac. Up until this email, they would have all received the information that McMaster had always given regarding refrigerators: there are common ones in every building, but should you choose to have one in your room, you can either rent one, or bring your own. Students believed this when they made the choice to live in a McMaster residence. And, with it being July mid July already, with some of us moving in in just over a month (IRC and CAs), it's only logical that people living in residence next year, who may not already have owned one, would have gone out and bought one already. If McMaster was going to make this decision for next year, there is no question as to whether or not they should have alerted the student population of this ages ago (I would have said May, at the absolute latest, so that the information would have been correct at May at Mac and at least first year students would have been aware of this before applying to residence). Beyond that, I cannot see any excuse that they have for not informing their student organizations, such as the IRC, of this long before the decision was made. The President of the IRC lives at McMaster for the summer for the very purpose of giving them one of us to easily contact regarding issues like this. To not bother to include the IRC in this decision shows a disregard for the opinions of the students regarding this issue.




Nicole Archer
Les Prince Hall Representative
Inter-Residence Council

Though there are numerous points which can be made regarding the new COLDEX fridge policy, contacting the company directly helped to obtain new information.

Namely, that:

1. The fridges are CSA energy star rated (there are efficiency standards based on the appliance, a minimal energy performance requirement, and a date past which the appliance must be manufactured to be deemed "energy-efficient").
2. The fridges are cleaned, pest-controlled and tested to ensure that they use energy efficiently (i.e. there are no 'energy leaks') prior to being sent out for student use.
3. They will be purchasing new fridges for McMaster for this upcoming year. The average age of a fridge is 2.7 years, however this varies with 'wear and tear'.. they are replaced accordingly.
4. Environmental issues (sustainability) to also consider are the fact that, when students purchase fridges every year, there are a large number of cardboard boxes which the University must dispose of. This problem vanishes when students rent fridges from COLDEX.
5. The price of a $120 fridge is 'actually' $82, if you subtract the taxes and $25 deposit.
6. Though they are purchasing new fridges, they do not know how many, because they do not know what kind of demand there will be for fridges at McMaster. However, they assure us that they will not have trouble getting all of them to McMaster prior to student move-in.
7. They replace a malfunctioning fridge within 24 hours (they give you a new one rather than repairing on-site).
8. The 'specific lifetime' of mini-fridges has been an issue in the past. Student fridges that have been 'handed down' may no longer meet CSA standards, have frayed cords (fire hazards), etc.
9. The question of "what will happen to your fridge after you leave residence?" was asked.. and then "what will happen to your fridge after you leave University?". Though this was a good point made by the company, note that they themselves claim to not use/rent fridges after they are no longer CSA-approved. Hence the 'specific lifetime' of a fridge is limited by the rate at which the Energy-Efficient Appliance Regulations are progressing.
10. The company is 31 years old.. they have years of experience. They are also renting out fridges to students at some other Universities. You can go to the company website for further information. If you do a quick comparison of the prices of the same fridge for different Universities, you will find that there is a discrepancy of ~15% between McMaster and some other Universities (McMaster being more expensive). This is due to a "number of factors".

Please note that the above is taken from contacting a COLDEX representative. It is not MY opinion, it is not the opinion of the Inter-Residence Council. This information was obtained to benefit the rest of the McMaster student body regarding COLDEX and why, perhaps, Housing and Conference Services made the decision to implement this policy.

However, the real issue is the lack of consultation with the IRC and other student organizations. The IRC will be in communication with other student organizations and organizing a meeting with Housing and Conference Services regarding this issue in the very near future.

Sarrah Lal
VP Communications
Inter-Residence Council

What I state here is my own, personal opinion.

I am angry at Residence Admissions, and I'm sure many people are. Mainly, I am angry because (1) The notification was sent less than two months from move-in, and (2) The justification given in the email is that this change helps Mac provide "a safe and healthy living environment in residence and contributes to the University's sustainability efforts".

I believe the best solution would be for Housing and Conference Services to repeal the change for this year, and apologize to students for the stress caused. They can state in this apology that the change will however be implemented in the coming year. A year is ample notice for those considering residence for 2011-2012 to use this new factor in their decision. It is also enough time for Housing and Conference Services to collect factual information about energy consumption and waste from the past to prove that this decision is reasonable. So when they send out a reminder email or post notification, they will be less vague.

something like 80% (or more) of all mini-fridges that are in res are likely brand new (and efficient) anyways...id say this is more profiteering than an honest safety concern

Nicole Archer and Sarrah Lal,

I'd like to know who's idea it was to completely ban other than Coldex fridges? Who brought this up in admin council meeting?




Is it possible that someone got a kick back on this? If that is true, and I'm not saying it is, I bet with some sleuthing macinsiders could figure out who and how.
(also mcmaster administration? shh cause they watch the internet so.)

Anyone down for solving a mystery?



Also: Can someone make a guide or a program/time for first years so they can sneak in an illegal fridge? I bet you IRC people got email contacts and CA power etc and could send the info around. street justice.

Originally Posted by andrew22

Nicole Archer and Sarrah Lal,

I'd like to know who's idea it was to completely ban other than Coldex fridges? Who brought this up in a council meeting?

Is it possible that someone got a kick back on this. I bet with some sleuthing macinsiders could figure out who and how.
(Was this something to do with mcmaster administration? cause they watch the internet so shhh.)

Anyone down for solving a mystery?

Hi Andrew22,

A solution to this problem will hopefully come about after direct consultation with those involved in making this decision. Pointing fingers at one particular individual is not the answer to the issue which has arisen, as there are many people involved in the development and ultimate creation of a policy such as the one to which you are referring.

The problem with the implementation of this COLDEX Fridge Policy is primarily the lack of consultation with student organizations, including the Inter-Residence Council. As I have said before, the IRC is currently in the process of contacting those involved in making and implementing this policy for the upcoming year.

Please note that this is NOT a detective case. Seemingly 'undercover' methods of going about dealing with student affairs is the primary cause of the current uproar within the student body (as you are probably aware if you have read the other thread on this topic). Direct confrontation of the issue and intelligent discussion should suffice to highlight the concerns students have with the new Fridge Policy, make any changes if possible, discuss ways in which student leaders/organizations can be informed of the possible existence of such policies (prior to their implementation, so as to have a say in how they may affect students), as well as propose ways in which such abrupt - and unexpected - changes in University Residence policies can be avoided in future years.

Sarrah Lal
Vice-President of Communications
Inter-Residence Council

ya ya ya ya but i wanna see a Sil headline like: "SoandSo admin makes X$$$ for the school/themselves with restrictive fridge deal made purposefully after agreements were signed"
but you're irc, and im just having fun. altho i liked how you called admin's methods seemingly undercover (:

(edit whoa saw the new emoticon and it scared me )

Here's a thought:
How about instead of making students rent all their fridges from one company, they give the students the option of buying OR renting a fridge, all from the same company?!
That would still ensure that
1) students are bringing fridges that are CSA-approved for energy consumption.
2) students are bringing newer fridges that are in good working order.
3) there can only be one mini fridge per room (maybe the larger style mini fridges for doubles/triples).
4) the company that mac deals with can deliver the fridges to the rooms prior to move-in, thereby alleviating all the transport issues.
5) mac can still probably cut a deal with the company and make some money (good for them).
6) students have the option of buying a fridge outright, and since not all that many people stay in res for multiple years, the number of sales wouldn't drop too much in comparison to making them rent a new one every year.
7) probably any other reason that mac implemented this decision is taken care of.

I think students would be fine with the whole Coldex deal if Coldex wasn't just a renting company, but also allowed students to purchase fridges form them.