Senate Rejects Going Trayless
by: Matthew MacFarland ‘11After months of controversy, Student Senate hears results of pilot program and votes “No”
Director of Food Services Jim Pohl hands out the results of the pilot program to the Student Senate.
On Wednesday, March 24, “going trayless” met its maker.
The unpopular policy, which received only one third of voter support in a Tiger Online poll, and had beleaguered students since the possibility had been breached early last semester, was voted down in a unanimous decision by the Student Senate.
In a final statement, Senate Chairman Scott Anderson ’10 said that going without trays was “not in the best interest of the student body.”
The meeting was designed to present facts gathered by a three-day pilot program, during which the trays—which are original from their first appearance in 1991—were removed altogether from Pannill Commons, forcing students to test-drive the policy. While the pilot program hardly improved student opinion, it did provide much-needed data on just how much food, water, and money the school might save by creating a cafeteria without trays. Jim Pohl, Director of Dining Services, presented the Senate with the results of the program, which demonstrated that abandoning trays might only provide negligible financial savings, and that after weighing the costs of hiring additional workers to maintain clean furniture in the commons and potentially purchasing larger cups and other tableware, going trayless might even cost more than it would save.
The study found that on average, going without trays created a difference of 1.12 oz. of waste per person per meal. Aramark, Hampden-Sydney’s food services provider, pays on average 10 cents per pound of food; thus, over its 32 1⁄2 weeks of operation, the commons would save $26,400. Pohl provided the Senate with an estimate of budget increases covering the hiring of new part-time employees to maintain the cleanliness of the dining area, which could run as high as $18,132. The study also included various cost increases for including new tableware of a 15% size upgrade—cups, plates, bowls, mugs, and carts and racks for them all. The potential cost for each group was given individually so that the Senate could have chosen to buy new glasses—one of the most common concessions asked for by the student bodies if they were to lose their trays—and nothing else. Purchasing those larger drink glasses would dent the trayless savings by another $2,243.50, while going all-out and upgrading every vessel in the cafeteria was projected as a $28,729.25 investment.
Realistic savings, then, could be placed as high as about $6,000 per year, after including the salary for a new employee and the cost of upgrading cups. On the other side of the spectrum—upgrading many more of the vessels in the commons, such as plates or mugs, and purchasing the racks for them—could push cost much higher than those $6,000 savings.
In this case, student senator C.J. Bauman ’10 said, “Going green puts us in the red.”
“The trays have their purpose,” Pohl said. While there were few broken dishes over the course of the pilot program, “the potential is there.”
Pohl also mentioned the reality of different students’ psychological behavior. “Students who waste food are going to waste food,” he said, “whether there are trays or not.” Removing trays from the commons would have little effect on that behavior.
Unspoken for was the ideological argument—that going trayless would not be simply about saving money; rather, it would present a statement that the College and its students are prepared to make sacrifices to promote sustainability and environmentalism. From such a standpoint, the negligibility of the projected savings would have little merit.
This argument, which seemed the central focus of the Student Committee on Recycling and Preservation (SCRAP), was not brought up over the course of the meeting.
No members of SCRAP attended the meeting.
In a campus-wide email, the newly-appointed chair of SCRAP, Brantley Kirkland ’11, wrote “For the coming year, we plan to refocus the efforts of the committee. Working with Student Government and student organizations to improve recycling and conservation on campus while minimizing conflict with our Hampden-Sydney lifestyle will be our goal. Furthermore, recognition of the latter is also a duty of this committee.”
This sentiment—finding other ways to promote “going green” on campus—was shared by the Senate. Junior Senator Matt Dabney voiced the need to “focus on sustainability,” citing the gaps in many Venable Hall windows as an example of an issue that, once fixed, would have an immediate impact in reducing heating costs.
Such measures could be accomplished with little pain on students’ part.
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