<p>Discuss! </p>
<p>I personally am for Trayless dining. People don’t get as much food and there is less clutter, and less trays to wash.</p>
<p>who cares?</p>
<p>I’m for it. I don’t see a good reason to be against it. I always just grabbed a plate, went on a line, put my plate down, and went and grabbed whatever else I wanted anyway.</p>
<p>But I haven’t been on meal plan for more than two years.</p>
<p>Well here are the problems:
- The plates are hot. They are hot when you grab them, and they get hotter as you put hot food on them. I find that inconvenient.
- If you need several plates, you will waste too much time going back and forth, which, if you’re in a hurry, will be inconvenient. If I have 15 minutes to eat, I don’t want to spend 5 minutes running around with the soup, the chicken, glasses, etc.
- Trays are easier to clean than tables. </p>
<p>I don’t see how the “people get less food” works. If that’s the goal of the dining services, why don’t they also make plates 50% smaller? Or put traps around? Or make the food disgusting? Put a time limit?</p>
<p>If they want to save money, they should cut back on the TONS of useless **** we have. Like the utterly useless and ugly “walk” they build between pembroke and main campus. How many millions was that? Or the vegetable garden from perkins. Or the new chairs from BH. The new glasses from the ratty?!? Sponsoring dumb projects in general. Putting some logic in the financial aid. THE PLASMA TV’S FROM THE RATTY?? hello??</p>
<p>If they want to save water, why don’t they put timers on showers? I have a big hunch showers use hundreds of times more water than scrubbing a few trays? And cut hot water altogether. Cold showers are healthier. I mean, we could all survive with 5 minute showers, right? Or limit how much electricity we can use? I mean, we all spend at least a few hours a day randomly surfing the web anyway.</p>
<p>What’s the difference between forcing me to burn my hands and waste time, and forcing you to take short cold showers? </p>
<p>This is one of those really dumb ideas which solve nothing. I don’t really care about it that much, it’s just that my brain hurts when I think about it. Yeah we’re wasting millions on useless crap, we all have cars and all that, we spend all our money on ipods and iphones and macs, but hey I know let’s save a few gallons of water to save the planet! And what’s better, lets FORCE everyone else to do it, so we feel even better about how really useless naive and clueless we are!</p>
<p>Those are your typical hippie wannabe college kids these days. Put a carbon waste whatever app on facebook and feel like you have done something useful. </p>
<p>If you want to do something useful, you know what you can do, instead of forcing everyone else to follow your half thought ideas? Donate your money. Yes, that’s it. If you want puppies not to die, you don’t go to church to pray, you don’t attend protests, you don’t take a course on “puppies dying around the world”, you DONATE money to puppy saving people. But of course you won’t do that, because you don’t really care, it’s just trendy.</p>
<p>The plates were never that hot when I was there and this is a very simple small thing to do that helps out. It’s really not that big a deal. The Walk is not about sidewalk, but about the 3-4 major building projects we now have space for along space that was originally dumpsters and a back alley sitting in the geographic center of campus. Totally inefficient use of the little space we have on campus revitalized for construction and pedestrians is a good way to spend money. New glasses at the Ratty came because the old ones sucked, were crack, and were old and need replacing like some things do. The vegetable garden by Perkins is a waste, I agree, however, it was a UCS initiative that had support from 80+% of the polled student body. The Plasma TVs are there to save money on paper and cost basically nothing in the scheme of things. Believe me, walk on other campuses, including RISDs, to see the waste that is plasma TVs.</p>
<p>It’s just a simple, small thing that works.</p>
<p>I’d be all for smaller plates too, but it’s cheaper to get rid of trays than buy all new small plates. And small plates don’t help as much as no trays.</p>
<p>Well if there’s half a liter of water per day we could save, why let the plates get in the way? Just stop using plates at all! Carry all your food in your hands! This would save both water without getting smaller plates, AND force people to get less food! Then they would just change the plan from “all you can eat” to “all you can carry in your bear palms”, and we’d be cooler and greener than harvard itself, since this is what it’s all about anyway - that’s where it all started. I mean, how could Brown be less green than harvard? we have our own million dollar vegetable garden! Of exactly less than 10 tomatoes! If brown learned anything from this, from now on when making polls it would do what the minority votes.
And I am very serious. Just by going against the majority would ensure that a reasonable and thoughtful decision is made. </p>
<p>So the tvs are there to save costs? I’m sorry, but do they ever show anything useful, or real advertisments which would bring money? If I’m not mistaken, they only show ads for student groups or college sponsored events, 95% of which are usually something having to do with feminists. Both of which use brown money. So where is the saving going on in this useless circle of uselessness? </p>
<p>And if you ever went to the V-dub with trayless going on, trust me you would unmistakably notice that the plates are hot. And I don’t mean hot as in warm, I mean as in impossible to hold for more than 4 seconds. Sure you can juggle them while in line, but with food not so easy. Or try getting hot soup from one end to the other when it’s crowded. Yeah. Not easy. If you’d also check the messages at the v-dub, you’d notice that most of them are complaining about this. Honestly? Not burning my hands 3 times a day and being able to enjoy a peaceful and uneventful meal (with soup!) >>>>>> saving a few gallons of water. Yeah so call me a puppy killer</p>
<p>Brown also gives money to student groups to advertise. We were able to lower the amount given to groups for copying/paper for advertising by installing the TV screens. They’re not really a big deal either way.</p>
<p>I haven’t been to the V-W in four years, and I almost never used a tray at the Ratty when I was there because by the time you’d get more than a plate of food the first plate is cold anyway.</p>
<p>The “green” thing has nothing to do with Harvard.</p>
<p>
Are you serious? Hurr durr. And there is a huge difference in cost and waste between a ****ing *vegetable garden<a href=“maintained%20entirely%20by%20student%20volunteers…%20who%20eat%20its%20food”>/i</a> and trayless dining. </p>
<p>All of your objections seem to translate to ‘I’m lazy’.
- The plates are not so hot that they will burn you. I ate there almost every day last year… Maybe I’m just lucky.
- If you have 15 minutes to eat, why are you getting several plates of food? I can carry my silverware, a plate, and a bowl of soup in my two tiny hands, and it takes 45 extra seconds to go get a glass of water.<br>
- Don’t get food all over the table? Or use napkins. And cleaning tables uses a lot less water than washing trays.
I, in fact, tend to make a bigger mess using a tray because balancing is a lot harder than carrying the cups/plates with my hands. I also tend to eat much less food at the V-Dub (and healthier… except for the ice cream): instead of grabbing 2-3 plates and everything that looks remotely delicious, I get my one plate and prioritize what I want. Not everyone’s going to eat less with trayless dining, but I’ve seen that this is often the case. I’m sick of seeing people get trayfuls of heaping plates and throwing away half their food; at the V-Dub, this is rarer. </p>
<p>Perhaps it sounds like I’m a ‘typical hippie wannabe college kid’ - I don’t know, maybe I am. It just ****es me off when people complain about harmless changes like this that both save money and are good for the environment. (Don’t get me wrong - I know Brown wastes money and does plenty of things that are horrible for the environment. But this isn’t one of them, and I’m not going to complain about it.)</p>
<p>I’ll tell you why they complain - because it’s silliness. Save water, yet blow money on a huge copper awning at the JWW. I honestly bet the decision had more to do with logistical stuff and a budget than “saving water”.</p>
<p>Addition: Having goals based on idealistic principles is good. Acting on them is good. It’s actually what I’m doing for a living. What I don’t like is how it seems that Brown does things and then calls it something else or labels it under one of the causes the students have been interested in or feel passionate about…or are banging a drum on the main green and yelling about. It’s a bit much. The people who operate the functioning elements of the school aren’t nearly as idealistic as professors and young students, at least from my experience working in some departments, so it seems to me that often things are skewed to put on a good show for students. Brown DOES waste money. You shouldn’t having getting rid of trays as a priority or action item when half the people WANT trays. BDH polls are useless. </p>
<p>How about saving money for better things, such as the workforce crunch requiring employees to do extra work on the same weekend where the University spends tons of money on a CONCERT for FUN. Don’t preach “let’s all work together to get through the tough times” and then have Nas come. Cancel Spring Weekend. We all know what would happen if they did that! </p>
<p>Do you see the silliness and talking out of both sides of their mouth I write about? How you spend that much money on a garden is beyond me. I’m in the process of creating urban agriculture plots right now and it’s not too hard once you have the land. They HAD the land.</p>
<p>I’m for trayless dining. I personally have nothing to add after what poubelle said.</p>
<p>Yea - 4
Nay - 1</p>
<p>NJsoccer doesn’t care, and, maybe I didn’t read close enough, but I can’t tell what wolfmanjack’s opinion is.</p>
<p>Oh I’m not saying we don’t waste money and that we don’t talk out of both sides of our mouths…</p>
<p>What I am saying is despite all of this, small, simple victories for no-big-deal common sense practices can still be celebrated and appreciated in that environment. If we had more of these kinds of changes implemented all over we’d still be better off than if we didn’t have these kinds of changes, whether or not they make a huge impact.</p>
<p>What wolfmanjack is saying is exactly my point. I have no problem with making cuts or giving up 0.005% of my comfort if I can see it helping realistically. If the money saved was actually used on something useful. Like encouraging GOOD students projects. Raising stipends for grad students or UTRAs. Etc.</p>
<p>However, it’s simply ridiculous when they ask these silly things in the name of “hard times” and “budget cuts”, yet continue to waste huge amounts of money on other things. You should always have the big picture in mind, not just focus on puny details which make no difference. It’s not the thing in itself that’s bothering me. It’s how they present and how it’s viewed like the solution to all our problems.</p>
<p>There are a MILLION other things they could do to save money AND improve comfort at the same time. Like not turning on air conditioning in BH so we all freeze to death in classes. The trayless is JUST for public image, and JUST because harvard and a few other schools started it. Out of everything they could do, they chose exactly trayless dining. wow. THIS is the problem. They throw little crumbles at you, and you gobble them up like dogs, and thank them. This is not how you solve problems. This is how you get fooled. And you people always buy it.</p>
<p>It’s just a perfect manifestation of hypocrisy. You do all these massive stupid things, and then one insignificant cutback so you don’t feel bad about yourself for not helping the planet. These symbolic gestures have no impact whatsoever on anything. You either do something realistic, or realize that you’re unable to and accept your condition. Doing useless things and pretending you’re helping out in some way is plain stupid.</p>
<p>This is not about the trays. The issue is much deeper than this, but like always people fail to think beyond the issue at hand.</p>
<p>Also I would very much want to see a realistic report on how much money is actually saved, and how it compares to the ridiculous amount of power wasted on BH cooling, for example. Or the new chairs. </p>
<p>If we just stick to the trays and dining services, excuse me, but isn’t the point of BDS to provide the most comfort, within a reasonable cost? If they want to realistically save money, why don’t they just cook simple food, and get rid of all the fancy expensive stuff that nobody eats anyway? </p>
<p>For example, why isn’t anyone complaining that Vdub serves whole jars of nutella? Do you know how much those cost? So you see, this is not at all about saving money. It’s just doing it for the show.</p>
<p>And to further prove how saving on the little things makes no difference, consider the following:
When you want to buy a chewing gum, there’s one for 1$ and one for 3$. Assuming comparable quality, almost everyone will buy the 1$ one, because it is obviously a whole lot cheaper, right? And if there’s any promotion, which saves you another 20c, you’ll go for it.
Or consider that you’re in a bazaar haggling for 5$ of a 30$ lamp.
Now say you want to buy a house say of around 500.000$. Will you haggle the price up to the 5$ you were trying to get on the lamp? Or up to the last 20c you got on the gum? No. You’d haggle for maybe 10.000 or 5.000 but not beyond that. Now tell me, what was the point of haggling for 20c on a gum, if you’re gonna throw out 5000$ anyway, which you could have easily saved? How many gums would that buy? Realistically speaking, did it make any sense at all to save those 20c? No. Same with trayless. QED</p>