We’ve all seen it. You walk into Paresky late on a Saturday night and are confronted with utter calamity: chairs tossed left and right, cups knocked on their sides, napkins strewn across the floor, and tables encrusted with the remains of uneaten food from that evening’s dinner.
And while the common Saturday post-Snar disasters may exemplify this problem, it would be disingenuous to claim that the student body only creates large messes at its most inebriated. Breakfasts at Driscoll, lunches at ’82 Grill, snacktimes at Lee Snack Bar, and dinners at Mission all leave varying levels of grody mess in their wake — blatantly disrespecting the people who keep us fed and our dining spaces clean.
By and large, the culture of the College isn’t one of uncleanliness and disorganization. Most students take care of their bedrooms and immediate living spaces, have meticulously organized Google Calendars, and often go to class in nice outfits. But these are all things that are in our own interests. If you don’t keep your bedroom tidy, you’re the one who has to navigate through heaps of unwashed clothes and live with a noxious smell. If you don’t keep an updated Google Calendar, you’re liable to forget a meeting that might be important to your academic prospects. And if you don’t ever dress with style, it’s you who might not catch the eye of that cute person across the room in your morning seminar. But if you leave a mess after your meals, it feels like it’s not your problem: The Dining staff take care of it and make sure the table is squeaky clean for the next time you sit down.
If we had to eat amid our own scraps and disarray, this problem would be nonexistent. But since we don’t, we pass the responsibility on to others, and those “others” happen to be some of the hardest-working, least privileged members of our community.
“But it’s their job,” I hear some of you saying. This is somewhat true; I’m not advocating for wiping down every table we eat at, picking up every crumb, or even returning every chair exactly where we found it — just that we don’t leave gross, preventable messes. The distinction is quite simple: If the mess is obvious, or if you get a queasy feeling in your stomach upon looking at it, clean it up. Don’t cross the line between negligence and disrespect.
Before coming to the College, I attended a boarding school with a large, communal dining hall. Surprisingly, the young adults here are far more likely to leave a table in shambles than the teenagers at my high school. I don’t think this is because students at the College are inherently more disrespectful or even more privileged than my high school classmates (in fact, the College, in my impression, is more economically diverse than most New England boarding schools).
Every few months at my high school, we would get lectured at an all-school meeting about how the unreasonable messes we were leaving disrespected the people who worked for our benefit in our dining hall. As a student body, we would then shape up for a number of weeks — being genuinely conscientious — before slowly sliding back into bad habits until the next time we were lectured. We were less mature than students at the College, and got treated as such, but this infantilizing approach did produce results.
Being infantilizing isn’t really an option here. As a first-year, I’m in no position to talk down to anyone, and the older that people become, the less effective that kind of treatment is. Furthermore, I know that this community is capable of being incredibly thoughtful. When I arrived here three months ago, I was blown away by how welcoming my new peers are and how genuinely they seem to care for me and my fellow first-years — not just as students, but as people. So, instead, I’m appealing to our higher selves. I’m appealing to what I know we can be.
In conversations at both the College and my high school, dining hall staff have told me that when students leave egregious messes, they feel disrespected and worse about their jobs. At a time where many staff at the College are organizing for better, more equitable benefits, the least we can do as students is brighten their days and try to reduce the disrespect they experience.
Even if you are respectful and don’t contribute to this problem, it can make a meaningful difference to take 30 seconds after dinner to push in a few chairs and sweep some crumbs into a napkin — even if someone else left them on your table. It’s simple, it feels good to do, and although it won’t save the world, the smallest efforts that we each contribute can add up to a genuine improvement in staff members’ lives.
It’s just as easy to look at your friend who left crud on their table during a meal, point at the mess, and just say, “Dude.” Ninety-nine times out of 100, they’ll understand what you mean and feel a brief flash of shame before quickly cleaning up their mess. Ultimately, they may even feel grateful to you, because most of our fellow students are good people.
None of us are going to be conscientious or want to hold our friends accountable all the time — and I’m no exception to this — but, as cliche as it sounds, these little acts of kindness make this campus a much better place. And if you need one more reason to do the right thing, here it is: If you don’t, I will write a far more preachy, lecturing op-ed. None of us want that.
Soren Anderson-Flynn ’29 is from Northampton, Mass.
