With all the recent hubbub about how terrible DDS is and how incredibly Mafia-owned Peter Napolitano is, I figured someone should be a voice of caution. No one entity is to blame for the current situation. Nor will firing Pete do any good. However, since this creative loner campus has decided to take a break from our collective cello practicing and join together in idealistic outrage over how much we can be forced to spend eating buffalo chicken (I have friends who like the prospect of 250 buffalo chicken sandwiches per term) the cries for privatization, mass firings, and general bedlam have been heard ringing through the halls. Something I excel at is placing blame, so let me do my best.
The College: as usual, no service even remotely administration-related is working properly. The College requires DDS to break even every year, but at the same time, it won't let them cut back clearly money-losing operations like the Skiway Cafe, the golf course and the Wheelock snack bar, because those students are obviously better than the rest of us and deserve a snack bar. (How did Pelton get that one thrown in there? Do East Wheelock students pull more all-nighters? Is it their right because they bothered to fill out the essay? In reality, those students spend their time knocking holes in the paper-thin walls and the snack bar is merely a catering service to AD and Heorot brothers after meetings.) Why does the College restrict them in this manner? To create the semblance of a variety of dining options for visitors and prospectives.
The administrators: embezzlement and mismanagement. Why else won't they release the books? Perhaps they are afraid people will realize that Dartmouth Water is not really $1.50 per bottle when they are filling it from the taps out back. What if we just got rid of the administrators all together? We could just pick some senior econ major every year and have the management of DDS be his thesis. His advisor would be checking the books, and econ minors could be the off-time managers. Honestly, it is hard to understand how the administrators have lasted this long, but they have had their hands tied somewhat by the College.
The Union: there are a lot of employees on at all times, but I don't think there are too many by any means. The way Dartmouth eats is really random and unpredictable. The grill has been mobbed at all times of the day, and the fact that they do offer so many different options at Food Court and Home Plate mandates that they have an employee manning each station. But what are we talking about? Firing Michelle because sometimes she isn't busy enough at the entree line? The employees love us and they like seeing us, but they do have lives of their own. We are complaining (or at least most of us are) that our parents will have to pay more money for us to eat. For a lot of us (and I don't mean to slam those students who are financially hurting), whether our parents shell out another $100 is no big deal. But to people like Delaney and Lisa and Julie, this job is pretty important. I really don't believe a justification can be made for firing union employees for their lack of work, because they do work pretty damn hard.
Stupid scheduling: come on, who really is in Westside every day at 4pm? What a pathetic waste of money. If they are going to leave it open for ten hours each day when no one eats there, they should need exactly two employees. One for the register and one to stock foods and do dishes. The students could just serve themselves, it is all you can eat after all.
It seems clear that money is being lost somewhere other than on employees and food (chicken fingers: $3.75 -- hello???). And for that DDS should be definitely held accountable, but there needs to be College intervention to figure out exactly what is wrong. Plus the $800 mandatory DBA is definitely a crackpot scheme and it royally stinks for off-campus students, so that clearly has to be changed. And the Wheelock snack bar should be torched on principle (just for fun).
But please, think long and hard on the decision of who you will support on the referendum, because if DDS goes, then Marriott comes, and I don't think I can deal with eating three meals a day of processed lard and prison-grade beef (I kid you not).
