< country where McDonald’s has to label their coffee cup lids “Caution: Contents may be hot” for fear of liability, I fail to understand how Carleton allows Bon Appetit to require students to relinquish their backpacks, sportsbags, waterbottles and, now, purses before entering. Not only is it an eyesore and a general inconvenience to anyone walking through the LDC, it is an affront to the tens of thousands of dollars I am obliged to pay for my board, regardless of whether I choose to dine on-campus.
I have been disgusted by this policy since the beginning of fall term, but initially assured my friends that it would surely be phased out as Bon Appetit got a better feel for the campus. Boy, was I wrong. Not only are there still dozens of laptops, Ipods, and Nalgenes ripe for the plucking, the dining hall managers have begun tightening enforcement of their prison-style policy. The only reason this ridiculous state of affairs has continued this long is because, thankfully, we attend a small liberal arts college in a small town. At any large University, wide-spread theft would have brought this to a screeching halt after two weeks.
As a junior, I have seen the food theft that did occur under Sodexho, and so am in principle sympathetic to Bon Appetit’s point of view. At the same time, I applaud Bon Appetit’s elimination of steal-able items: the bread is sliced, the pies are individually plated, etc. Particularly in light of this, I consider it absolutely unacceptable that students are being prohibited to bring their backpacks into the college dining hall. You can convince me this makes sense when Starbucks prohibits briefcases; until then, I’ll eat out.
-Jon Fraser is a third-year student