From Soup to Spooge Dishwashing with McCardell

Author: Kate Davis
Staff Writer

You know the Proctor drill: you shove your tray into the four-tiered revolving carrier, remove and sort your silverware (if you are conscientious), and leave. By the time the remnants of your meal circulate around the corner, you are grabbing your jacket, focused on leaving without giving a second thought to your time spent at the dining hall. Fifteen minutes later, you have probably already forgotten what you ate.

But what if, instead of absently disconnecting, you were to take responsibility and reconnected with the Middlebury College community beyond the student body? Last Thursday, Jan. 10, I had the opportunity to do just that at the kickoff night of the Dishwashing Project. Oren Frey '02 and Leda Smith '02 created this community service initiative to involve student, staff and faculty volunteers in the dishrooms of Proctor and Freeman.

The Dishwashing Project was initially devised as a citizenship requirement for graduation. Frey and Smith were inspired by the lack of respect they witnessed toward the staff in general, not just Dining Services. Smith described this attitude that "there is always a nameless, faceless someone there to clean up your messes after you, which we take for granted because of a sense of entitlement."

Early last fall, Frey approached President John McCardell with the idea of including a work component in the academic experience at the College. By providing a more integrated experience of the College, Frey and Smith hoped to foster appreciation for the institution and staff, reduce stratification within the community and encourage student ownership of the College.

Now successfully implemented, with over 100 responses to the informational email within the first day, the Dishwashing Project will continue through the spring with bi-weekly dishwashing nights at Proctor and Freeman dining halls, giving dishroom employees a paid night off.

Thursday night, I gathered at 5 p.m. at Proctor with the other volunteers for the night: McCardell and his wife Bonnie, Anywhere Sikochi '05, Cory Balint '04, Andy Martel '04, Smith and Frey, with Zach Manganello '03 and Bill Beaney, the hockey and golf coach, joining us later. I was nervous, and it was not because of the closed circuit television broadcasting us out into the dining hall. I knew how busy Proctor could get, and I could only imagine the potential chaos here on the other side of the tray.

After Darla, our supervisor, handed out white aprons, we divided up into an assembly line, in which we would rotate, to prepare for the impending onslaught of dirty dishes. President McCardell and I formed a team at the first station: clearing and sorting the dishes, a job accomplished by two pairs of volunteers. We actually worked quite well together, developing an efficient system as the trays began to roll in. He grabbed the trays off the revolving carrier, removed the forgotten silverware and placed the cups into their rack. Meanwhile I tackled the many plates and bowls as well as sorted the coffee mugs into a separate rack. It was my responsibility to scrape the leftover food off the plates into a watery trough for the garbage disposal, which I messily did for awhile with my bare hands. (Plastic gloves were available for the more squeamish.)

When Darla handed me a large spatula to scrape, it seemed like a godsend. After that, I sorted the dinnerware into different piles on a tray: plates, bowls, small and large, pottery versus plastic. Once rush hour hit at around 6:30 or 7 p.m., this task definitely became hectic, though never as overwhelming as I had supposed it to be.

President McCardell dived right into the operation, unafraid to get his hands dirty. He seemed to be enjoying himself, proud to be a part of this project. In fact, everyone shared this attitude. The dishroom that night had a very genial, cooperative and enthusiastic atmosphere. The volunteers joked around and actually appeared to be having a good time doing the dishes for over 1,000 people, and the Dining Services staff and supervisors came in several times to thank us for helping them out.

When our piles of dinnerware and trays became too high, we pushed them onto a conveyor belt, which transported them around the corner to the next station on the assembly line: loading the dishwasher. Every plate and bowl had to be placed piece by piece into a revolving rack, which carried them into the depths of a sterilizing dishwasher. We tried to be nimble, stuffing in the ware before the plastic tongs of the rack grabbed it from us and continuously unloading the conveyor belt. Racks of cups were placed directly onto the tongs, but heavy tubs of silverware, brought in from outside, had to be emptied into their own special tray before heading into the dishwasher.

Everyone agreed that the last station was the hardest task: unloading the dishwasher. The plates, bowls and utensils came out of the sterilizer steaming hot. The pair of volunteers had to remove them quickly, sort them into separate piles and stack the trays of cups. The assembly line was most often held up by this process, since the team also had to perform quality controls, looking out for dishes that were not well cleaned and sending them back for a second round.

While participating in the Dishwashing Project, I was most amazed by the sheer volume of food that Middlebury students wasted. And I do not simply mean the cumulative total of a few bites left on each plate. I got an up close and personal look at whole pieces of chicken parmesan, piles of meat sauce and uneaten pasta, carefully constructed salads that remained untouched, chunks of bread and six-inch sausages. All of this was shoved down the garbage disposal (along with stacks of unused paper napkins), where it was ground up and came out as a thick paste called spooge. Some of this spooge is sent to the compost pile here at Middlebury, where it heats the greenhouse, while the rest is shipped to a farm in New York. I had no idea how much waste students generate; it is something that most of us are not conscious of until we find ourselves scraping it off dish after dish with our own hands.

The Dishwashing Project was a very rewarding experience, and I highly encourage all students, staff and faculty to participate on upcoming nights. The Middlebury Initiative for Sustainable Development (MISD) has talked about volunteering their support on at least one day, and perhaps other sports teams and clubs could each join in as well. Those who are interested should contact Oren Frey at ofrey@middlebury.edu or Leda Smith at lsmith@middlebury.edu.