Word: hsa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...HSA says they got permission many years ago to rent the microfridge for use in dorm rooms...
It’s been a mantra for so long that no one really remembers how it got started. The only cooking appliance allowed in Harvard dorm rooms is the microfridge, rented from Harvard Student Agencies (HSA) for the low, low price of $250 a year plus deposit. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. HSA’s microfridge is just as illegal as any other microwave, rice cooker, coffee pot or teapot that students might secret away in a corner of their room. But Harvard administrators don’t know this, and for about seven years, they?...
...HSA says its microfridge is allowed in dorm rooms because of the low wattage it draws from electrical circuits, making it less of a fire hazard. But that’s not true. For one, other microwave ovens run on lower wattage than HSA’s and retail for about a third the price of HSA’s device. Second, the real obstacle to having cooking appliances in dorm rooms is not the city fire code but the state sanitary code, which expressly forbids cooking appliances of any kind in dorm rooms. HSA was never exempted from these...
...what went wrong? How has HSA convinced the entire college it has the proper permission for the microfridge when it really does not? No one’s really sure. HSA first started selling the microfridge seven years ago, eons ago for a company whose employees turn over every four years. Institutional memory just doesn’t go that far back. Robert Rombauer, HSA’s general manager and one of the company’s six full-time adult employees, says he doesn’t know who was in charge of getting approval for the microfridge...
Operating under the assumption that microfridges are legal, the College has increasingly enforced the HSA monopoly in the last year by cracking down on other cooking appliances...