New Bates signs do not deter students

by Paige Rentz

Wednesday February 22, 2006

Is there an apple theft epidemic at Sarah Lawrence? Perhaps that is a bit exaggerated, but new signs in Bates are calling attention to this issue. This semester, signs requesting that no food be removed from the cafeteria have many students talking. Last Wednesday, the signs were “removed from the salad bar as it was not an appropriate area for display,” says Denise Sombat, the new Food Service Director for Sarah Lawrence.

Sombat comes to Sarah Lawrence from SUNY Albany, where she was the Director of Training. She replaces Marco Morales who has become the Director of Food Service at Manhattanville College.

Signs still remain on the cafeteria door, reminding students of the policies.

According to Sombat, these signs are merely new reminders of old rules. “The policy of not taking food out of the dining room really has been in effect all the time,” Sombat said. This policy is not specific to Sarah Lawrence. Chartwells, the company that owns Flik, enforces this rule in campus dining halls across the country.

Sombat, a registered dietician with twenty years of experience in food services, explained that the policy was created out of a concern for consumer health.

Sombat, as well as the other Flik managers on campus, are all serve-safe certified, which means that they are knowledgeable about how food is purchased, received, stored, prepared, cooked and has to be held.

“We know how the food is being held here, and we’re very conscientious about food safety. When the kids take food out, or if they were going to take food out, we have no way of controlling how they’re going to hold it, and it’s our concern. We don’t want to see anyone getting sick. We’re here to serve you,” she said.

To this idea, sophomore Maggie Murphy responded, “I think that reason is kind of stupid. Someone could take a sandwich out of the Pub that has mayonnaise on it and you don’t know how they’re going to hold it, if they’re saving it for later. I know that they’ve got a lot more health codes and stuff to worry about than I probably know, but that sounds stupid. People have common sense anyway, and usually people know you need to refrigerate things.”

First year Rania Kokkinis agreed, “The rationale about the health reasons for not taking food out of Bates, I think is very ridiculous, and I think that it’s just to cover up the fact that Flik doesn’t want you to take cafeteria food out of the cafeteria because they don’t have enough. For instance they might want to put apples back out instead of having new apples. I think that people will take food out anyway. Even if the signs are up, it doesn’t really stop anyone.”

For other students it is an issue of convenience. First year Tanya Merrill said, “I think we should be allowed to bring food out. I mean if I’m still hungry but I have a class to run to or something, I want to be able to grab a sandwich from here and still be able to eat. When eating my lunch I don’t want to have to sit in the cafeteria.”

Sombat’s response to these complaints was that ” this is an all-you-can-eat, dine-in facility at Bates, and that’s what it’s meant to be. Food shouldn’t be taken out. We have the pub, where it is a to go facility, as well as the Atrium [Cafe].”

Other students take issue with the policy for monetary reasons. First year Willa VanNostrand said ” it’s absurd that we can’t take food out of here because, given our meal plan, we pay a lot of money every semester, every year, to eat. So I think we should at least be able to take things like fruit or bread or things that we don’t have around the dorm or in our kitchen.”

First year Charlotte Valentine agreed: ” I really don’t like these signs because I spend a lot of money, or my parents spend a lot of money, on the meal plan, and I want to get my money’s worth out of the food. I don’t know what they do with the food at the end of the day, but I imagine they throw it out, so it’s kind of a waste if they don’t let us take it. And if I don’t eat enough here, which I sometimes don’t do, the food that I take on my plate, I’d like to take that out and eat it later in my room.”
Though the food left over from meals in Bates is actually set aside for the Empty Bellies, a student-run group that collects the food and delivers it to a homeless shelter in the Bronx, Valentine is right that food is left over, even if it does not necessarily go to waste.

Many students feel that the new signs are not a deterrent to taking food out of Bates. First year Shakira Croce said that they might have had the opposite effect: ” I don’t think the signs made any difference one way or the other, and maybe even encouraged the students to take food outside of the cafeteria.”
First year Aiden Seale-Feldman said, ” I never was one to take Tupperware in and steal food, but I do take fruit, and their sign is not going to stop me.”

Murphy adds, “They can only really enforce it if they see you doing it, and it’s really easy not to get caught. I sometimes take cereal out in little plastic baggies, so if that’s their rationale, I shouldn’t get in trouble for saying that.”