How university housekeepers build community among students and each other

Her day begins at 7:30 a.m. in the hallways, lounges and bathrooms of Centerville Hall, removing trash from the bins and mopping the floors. As students file out of their rooms, careful of the glossed tiles, they stop to say good morning and some ask her, “how do I look today?”

“Everybody says good morning, they’re used to me,” Karena Dorsey, 50, said about her residents. “They see us [housekeepers] every day and they’re away from their parents and their friends and they need something. We’re that something.” 

Dorsey is the first person many residents on floors two, three and four of Centerville Hall see when they leave their rooms. Before joining the university, she worked a series of jobs as a preschool teacher in Prince George’s County, a nanny and as a staff member at a Six Flags petting zoo. In 2017, she applied to work alongside her sister and her oldest daughter in this university’s dining hall services and moved to Residential Facilities as a housekeeper in 2020, where she’s been since.  

A few buildings away, on the first floor of Oakland Hall in Oakland Community, lead housekeeper Frederick Cummings, 44, can be seen polishing the lobby and greeting students on their way in and out of the building. He came to campus in 2009 and also started in the university’s dining services. 

From 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday to Friday — and some Saturdays — Cummings, Dorsey and their coworkers work to maintain the dorm’s bathrooms, stairs and hallways, filling up paper towels, disinfecting surfaces and wiping up spills until their break, which is every two hours starting at 10 a.m. 

Residents who neglect the dorm’s common spaces and treat housekeeping staff impolitely are the minority of students Dorsey and Cummings encounter, which Dorsey says is because, “a lot of them are focused on what they have to do for that day and they don’t see anything but what’s in front of them.” 

Cummings recalled a student advocating for him in their dorm group chat over a resident misusing one of the showers. 

“He went off like, ‘Fred do this for us and y’all acting like four-year-olds.’” Cummings gestured to the building’s break room closet, where several signed banners from students are stored.  

But on move-out day at the end of the Spring semester, housekeepers across campus housing communities are asked for pictures and receive gift cards and handwritten notes from appreciative students. 

All day, as residents hectically check out of their dorms, the housekeepers, alongside the university’s Resident Life staff, remain in the buildings, ensuring a smooth transition. 

For Dorsey, her community doesn’t leave campus during the summers, they share coffee in the morning before shift, host multicultural staff parties and celebrate each other’s birthdays in their break room.  

“We all know each other. We all know about our kids, our grandkids, that kind of stuff. We try to encourage each other a lot,” Dorsey said.

Centerville’s housekeepers are mostly people of color. Staff are Ethiopian, Haitian, Salvadoran, Guyanese and African American, among other nations and cultures, Dorsey said. 

Of the total campus housekeepers population 84% are either Black or Latino, according to data from the University of Maryland.

In late January, the Trump Administration swiftly launched its mass deportation program through several executive orders. Among them include an attempt to redefine birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment, stopping refugee arrivals and expanding military service members’ permissions to act as immigration and border enforcement, according to the Associated Press. 

The administration’s undertaking prompted the University of Maryland to release a memo on Jan. 31, guiding faculty and staff on interacting with ICE and agents from the Office of Inspector General. 

The memo advised them to contact UMPD and the university’s general counsel office if asked for personal or sensitive information, according to The Diamondback. 

Oakland community’s housekeepers are citizens, Cummings said. Cambridge Community’s housekeepers are either citizens, have green cards or permanent resident cards, according to Dorsey. However, not all of her coworkers’ family and friends share the same statuses. 

Her staff check on each other daily. 

“We talk every day. It’s terrifying because they see people they know that it’s happening to, that their friends are afraid to send their kids to school if they have immigration issues,” Dorsey said. 

The university recognizes staff who obtain citizenship and other accomplishments on Employee Appreciation Day in March, along with offering English-learning programs and directing staff members to counseling and language services, according to Dorsey.

During her freshman year, Leyla Davarya, a sophomore finance and philosophy double major, lived on the 8th floor of Centerville. She didn’t interact with the housekeepers more than saying hello in the hallways but the dorm felt “homier” because of them.

“I kind of almost saw her as a safe adult figure,” Davarya said about her floor’s housekeeper, adding that she took care of a large group of girls and upheld her dorm’s standard of cleanliness. “It kind of felt like they were holding everything together.” 

At the end of the day when Cummings goes home to Oxon Hill, Maryland, he watches TV and rests until he has to wake up for the commute to campus. The students make his day easier. 

“I’ve made a couple of little friends here, my little buddies,” Cummings said, laughing. “You gotta have a relationship with them and it helps your day go faster too.”