Remember when “going trayless” was a volatile issue?
Most of you probably don’t, which unfortunately means you won’t appreciate the history behind the lack of trays at the dining halls.
This issue reached its political zenith in 2009, when Sustain Mizzou and former Missouri Students Association President Jordan Paul started pushing for trayless dining with Campus Dining Services.
The issue boiled down to this — get rid of trays to make the dining halls, which are used by thousands of people every day, more sustainable or keep the trays for the “convenience.”
Campus Dining Services and the Residence Halls Association held a “Trayless Week Challenge” in 2009, showing that the university was starting to get serious about dining hall sustainability. The “challenge” allowed CDS to gather empirical data that showed food waste decreased by 25 percent and 14,000 gallons of water were saved.
Two years later, we are finally trayless! Woot!
We are doing something great for the earth and for CDS’ pocket book, but how does this affect students?
According to a Maneater article from last spring, CDS uses 19 cents of every dollar for food, using the rest to pay for labor and maintenance. I feel like it is safe to assume that using fewer resources (i.e. water, electricity) and saving more food will inherently allocate less money towards food and maintenance.
With more money in the bank, I urge CDS to redistribute its funds to benefit the students.
I have a couple of feasible suggestions that I hope make the students happy.
The first obvious, and ideal, option is to scale back the prices on meals. The cheapest plan comes to $2,500 for the academic year. That’s still incredibly expensive. I know that when I lived in the dorms, even if I ate all of my meals at the dining halls, I wouldn’t be able to eat $2,500 worth of food. It would be nice if CDS passed along its savings to us in the form of cheaper dining plans.
Of course, hoping CDS will make things cheaper is anything but pragmatic. This is a state university, which, especially in poor economic times, means aspects of our college experience have to act like a business and garner profit. Dining services is an obvious auxiliary that should not lose money.
Another option is to redistribute how CDS spends its money.
CDS says that most of the money it makes goes toward maintaining equipment. We aren’t using the dishwasher as regularly as before, which means the upkeep cost will decrease, so would it be possible to invest in high quality food waste composters? Instead of throwing out food waste, we could essentially recycle it. I bet the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources’ sustainability agriculture program would benefit from an in-house source of organic fertilizer.
CDS could look at what type of food it provides students. It could put more money into the local economy by purchasing more local produce and meat, like Missouri Legacy Beef featured at Dobbs. It could save more money by buying cheaper alternatives — CDS buys all name-brand cereal. Personally, I would rather have my money spent on high-quality produce and meat over high-quality starches.
Students who work for CDS have an opportunity to apply for scholarships. If CDS is saving a substantial amount of money from going trayless, another option is to fund more scholarship opportunities.
This is all hypothetical, but as the trayless dining issue proved, student involvement can make a difference to create progressive change. If you want to change something about MU’s operation, don’t be afraid to get involved with RHA, MSA or any other organization on campus.
