Hidden in the back is a bowl full of half-eaten buffalo wings.
You may have seen this on Twitter already, but it took me a while to find time to write this and I am still fucking pissed off. I see this almost every time I walk through Usdan. It’s not just this table, either. By the time Late Night rolls around, the carpet is littered with abandoned bits of food, napkins, silverware. It’s gross, but that’s not really the point: who the fuck is supposed to clean that shit up? Bon Appetit? Nope. Sun Services? Nope. You? Abso-fuckin-lutely. 
I am going to start photographing this crap every time and at some point I will make a gallery of it on Wesleying under the same title. I apologize in advance for the liberal use of the second person.
There are so many things wrong with this picture. (It’s a little blurry, for one.) Dare I enumerate them?
1. The Disrespect: Do you really think that these members of our community, the service-people, are so fucking beneath you that you can’t be bothered to pick up the shit you drop on the floor, or take your plate twenty feet to the dishroom conveyor belt? Grow the fuck up.
2. The Food Waste: Did I mention the full plate of half-eaten wings, already? It really doesn’t hurt to get a plate of food, eat all of it, and then walk the hundred feet back to get more food if you’re still hungry. What does hurt is wasting all that food. Did you know that it costs Wesleyan more than $1,000,000 (yes, a million) every year to remove all the trash and recycling from campus? Let’s not even get started on the environmental problems.
3. The Culture: When you do shit like this, you tell everyone around you that this is okay, which it really fucking isn’t. Why do people leave bottles, cans, other crap all over Foss and Fountain? Because they’re drunk and lazy assholes they see other drunk and lazy assholes people doing it. So let me set the record straight: neither the ground nor the table fall under the category of “trash can.” Go find one. They’re everywhere.
4. Fuckin’ Me: I took a picture of this and then walked away. Sure, I was late for a meeting and in a rush and just passing through, but so is everybody else and I should have taken the time to clean it up.
I really hope I don’t end up publishing that gallery.
DKE should just pay for an entourage of maids (please, at least $15 and hour) to just clean up after them, specifically their trash, vomit, and general lack of manners.
Thanks for bringing this issue to the “table”! Hopefully we can take the necessary steps to build a consciousness around courtesy, compassion and consideration on campus.
Suggestion: How about we call each other out in the moment when we see the mess being made and/or left behind?
Wesleyan is OUR school so let’s proactively work to make it a clean,
safe space (rather than playing the blame game retroactively).
P.S. Thank you to all of you who cook for and clean after us!
This post is long overdue. Thank you for this.
All of you who are arguing about athletes and frats are uninformed and have no idea what you’re talking about. I wiped down tables in usdan last year and I saw this mess on both sides of the cafeteria. Athletes or not, people left their plates everywhere because they’re lazy and entitled. As embarrassing as this is, it’s a reflection of our school as a whole, not just one group of students.
^^^preach
Because no one should generalize. There are some athletes that might do it, there are some nonathletes that do it. Some athletes are super nice to servers, some hipster kids are, etc. People are not their stereotype, and the fact that no one is more offended by students not caring about their environment enough to PICK THEIR SHIT UP is the part that throws me.
When did Wesleying posts turn into rants about personal guilt?
This is a bug report for our community. I am recognizing my contribution to the bug; nothing more, nothing less. Ain’t about personal guilt at all.
this isn’t about personal guilt. it’s about taking responsibility for yourself. bon app employees, sun services and all of the other affiliated staff at this school are not our parents or our maids. they’re exploitatively overworked as it is; the least we can do is carry our dishes twenty feet to the conveyor belt area.
Concerning point #1: the townie employees make $17.50/hour, which is WAY higher than the market’s valuation of their experience and skills. If they don’t like picking up trash, they can go make half as much for harder, dirtier work at a real restaurant. End of story.
“Oh yeah, and the marketplace is perfect. Who cares if it’s really damn hard to live off of minimum wage? Man, fuck poor people.”
Bullshit.
No one is saying the marketplace is perfect. However, it is the reality at present. The point is that the workers at Wes have it VERY easy for what they are paid and what they are required to do, particularly given their skill and experience.
That is so laughably false I don’t even know where to begin.
Either you are a troll or you write for Fox, clearly.
Excuse me for trying to reshape “reality” into something better.
How is it false? The Wesleyan workers in question are being paid well above market rate. That is a fact. Sure, it would be nice if market rate were higher, but that is not the reality. I deal in reality, not in these insulated and idealistic notions of fairness and equality.
Just because Unite Here at Wesleyan has a great union which fights for it’s workers wages, doesn’t mean that assholes should be allowed
If the union doesn’t like it, the union should do something about it. Oh, wait – they are too busy being shiftless and corrupt and lazy. I forgot.
http://xkcd.com/1081/
And the townies do so much work that they literally DESPISE working there, but they love the kids, they never complain of how shitty some people are. Also, at Late Night normally students clean up this shit and they’re paid only $9 or so an hour, after dealing with the same classes and shit you deal with they go to work and clean up after everyone for three hours. And townies are paid to make sure they HAVE workers, to make YOUR FOOD, and you want to tell them to do something else? They should get paid well to deal with this shit.
These are work/study jobs. The students are getting paid $9/hour plus a need based scholarship. Thus, they are essentially making upwards of $60,000/year to work in a fucking cafeteria, so don’t give me that shit.
^ Clearly you don’t understand how work study operates. That’s no surprise though considering how entitled you sound. You obviously have never needed it. Not all work study students get a full ride and most are putting every bit of money they earn (me personally having three jobs in addition to a full schedule) back into all the finances that go into living at Wesleyan as well as the (yes lower than most) tuition. We aren’t pocketing the money. Wesleyan gets back almost every penny they give me for work study. Just because some of us can’t have our parents pay $60,000 a year (or anything for that matter-some of us pay our own way through school completely) doesn’t mean we deserve to be treated like servants. Only saying, Wes talks about Diversity and Acceptance, I’d like to see that in practice.
But separate from all that, pick up your trash and silverware. It is just simple manners. Maybe my parents don’t make tons of money, but they took the time out to teach me that.
I’m sorry, but you’re not going to get sympathy from me. You are getting an top-notch education at an elite private university, and all you are asked to do is work a little for that privilege. That is HARDLY unreasonable.
Sorry, I wasn’t asking for sympathy nor was I asking for a free-ride. I’m HAPPY to work all my jobs. I’m not saying I shouldn’t. However, I think it’s fair to say that people should be kind enough to not treat those people who are working hard like their worthless servants. The rules are pick up your trash, so do it. I work hard and I love that but I’m just pointing out that some people lack common decency.
Also, my parents work very hard and have had nothing handed to them.Hard work doesn’t always equal tons of money. Some of us have harder prejudices against us whether that’s for physical or mental disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic class. People who earn a lot of money don’t always work hard and people who work hard don’t always earn a lot of money.
Either way I’m happy to pay my way through here, just don’t see why people are slobs.
Also might be worth noting that the University likes hiring work study students because then they only pay half of our salaries (the Federal Government covers the other half). So, they do benefit from us working, cheaper for them for the same work.
I know many students who work in the cafeteria in Usdan, myself included, who are NOT work-study students. I am just as upset by the way cafeteria workers are treated as anyone else.
It sickens me to think that arrogant imbeciles such as yourself feel no responsibility whatsoever for the mess they make and believe that their privilege, allowing them to be free from the stresses of holding a campus job while maintaining an extremely rigorous schedule, also entitles them to belittle the people cleaning up the mess they left.
Anyone who arrives at a school like Wesleyan and can’t clean their own dishes needs to grow the fuck up or gtfo.
why are we so liberally throwing around the word townie? maybe this is why middletown has such a poor relationship with wes
This is exactly right
this isn’t about privilege, it’s just rude
No, you’re wrong, this is about privilege.
Wesleyan is structured in such a way that hyper-individualism is accepted and encouraged. There are ways in which this is great. For instance, we are given tons of room to choose whatever courses we like, we don’t have to complete core requirements (it’s debatable whether this is great), plus we can engage in nearly any activity that we wish (can you say no cut football!). We are encouraged to make our own way over our four years here, and to produce a unique creative/academic text/work as a culmination to our studies.
However, the freedoms we are afforded on this path have a down side. As many community organizers on campus know, it is extremely difficult to foster momentum within a given club. Many student groups on campus rely heavily on the dedication of a few core members – from sound coop to the local coops, middletown urban gardens to wild wes, SART to ASHA, Wesleying to the Argus.
Our univeristy system actively discourages communal actions by emphasizing individualistic patterns of dependence and consumption. Sun services vacuums the halls and takes out the trash. Physical Plant mows the lawns. Program Houses struggle all the time to keep theur kitchens clean because of the privilege we are afforded by the university. Attempts at organizing dining cooperatives at Wesleyan have been consistently rejected. In order to have some semblance of a communal dining experience, you must pray that you have access to a clean kitchen. If you don’t, you rely upon a dining service to cook and clean for you.
Are we/(the government) paying 60,000 dollars a year to learn how to live in the real world, or to get a “world class education” while being waited on?
Is it that surprising that people are leaving shit on tables in Usdan?
Please keep commenting on Wesleying posts.
I’m paying $60,000 for an education, not to learn how to live in the real world. There are less expensive ways to do that. For one of the most expensive schools in the nation, I DO expected to be waited on in some ways. This is suburban America. People get waited on by people that get paid to do it. Get used to it.
Disclaimer: I’m not advocating this disgusting display, though.
Learning how to live in the real world *is* part of a good education.
I don’t know if its athletes, but it had to be a frat. DKE, Beta, Psi U, or Eclectic: fifty-fifty chance it was athletes.
You clearly sit on the techie side if you don’t know that’s the DKE table
lol athletes in eclectic
DELTAS NVR DIE OR CLEAN UP
dint you graduate, kool keith?
who decides if that is okay? athletes.
how about we take a post about privilege and reduce it to a stereotype? … problem solved
Let’s not stereotype. And these kids obviously aren’t so privileged that they don’t understand the concept of cleaning up after themselves. Most of the plates, cups and food are cleaned. Unless of course, they just got a few plates and a ton of drinks worth. (Unlikely because thats a 10:1 cup to plate ratio). It’s really just the kid at the end… the thirsty, dirty eater who uses TONS of TISSUES and doesn’t finish his vegetables that ruins it for the crowd. Next time, tell that kid to eat his vegetables, stack his cups and walk fifteen feet.
Your ignorance is adorable. However, we go to a D3 school and all the athletes on this campus, myself included, got in to Wes based on academics. There’s a big difference between an athlete and a jock. A “jock” is considered to be unintelligent and only talented at his/her sport. I don’t see any jocks at Wes. I see ATHLETES- bright individuals who are passionate about their sport and excel on the field AND off, whether in the class room, computer lab, or art studio. I know that after practice we may eat a lot, but I also know that we tend to be respectful and clean up after ourselves. And, as I said, we are HUNGRY. No food is left uneaten at the end of a team meal.
I don’t know which athletes you’re talking about, but I know so many people who fall under that category that would hardly be considered bright or smart. You can deny it all you want, the presence of jocks is felt way more than the presence of athletes, anyone in this school can confirm that. Also, that’s the DKE table, case closed.
I’m glad this argument has been reduced to a trivial one about semantics…