Cleanliness Dust-Up at Harvard

A Harvard University student’s fledgling dorm-cleaning business faced the threat of a campus boycott Thursday after the school’s daily newspaper criticized it as dividing students along economic lines.

The Harvard Crimson newspaper urged students to shun Dormaid, a business launched by Harvard sophomore Michael E. Kopko that cleans up for messy students.

“By creating yet another differential between the haves and have-nots on campus, Dormaid threatens our student unity,” the Crimson said in an editorial.

“We urge the student body to boycott Dormaid.”

Like many elite American universities, Harvard has a mix of affluent students as well as those who are less well off.

But Kopko, 20, said he could not understand the Crimson’s reaction to his business, which he said was all about creating jobs and wealth at the Ivy League school.

“In a free economy it’s all about choice, and the Crimson is trying to take choice away from people,” Kopko told Reuters. “I think it’s a very uneconomic and narrow view. It’s ... against creating wealth for society.”

Kopko said, he had signed up 50 clients since launching his dormitory-cleaning service last month in the Boston area. He plans to expand the service to other parts of the country and is aiming for $200,000 in annual sales in a year’s time.