Rugby team tackles dish recovery

Author: Mattie Gratch

The Middlebury men's rugby team, in an effort to raise funds for post-season play, has accepted positions as dining hall monitors in Proctor, Ross and Atwater Dining Halls. The fundraising effort follows a recent budget cut in the athletic department that eliminated funds for both the male and female teams' post-season play.

Dining Services announced positions for dining hall monitors in January, prior to the demise of the Dish Recovery System (DRS). In order to prevent students from leaving the dining halls with dishes, Midd Dining made plans to employ students to monitor peers leaving dining halls. The plan for dish monitors - as well as the elimination of the DRS - followed months of exorbitant and expensive dish loss for Dining Services.

Appropriately, within the past three weeks, dining services has hired the rugby team to act as dining hall monitors to prevent dishes from being taken out of the dining halls. This monitoring system provides a respectable reciprocal relationship between the dining staff and the rugby team. The dishes now stay in the dining hall while the rugby team earns money for equipment and other necessary subsidy for play. The team as a whole receives money because for the work and time put in by their players. This is somewhat similar to the softball team working the concession stand at the hockey games to earn extra funding to benefit their program.

Jon Sherr '08, an avid rugby player and dining hall monitor, works in Proctor during the dinner shift two nights a week. "As a dish monitor, I am responsible for counting all the students that enter the dining hall, and I am also responsible for ensuring that dishes remain in the dining hall," he said. "It is not a difficult job, and I think it is useful as a moral deterrence to enforce school policy."

Contrary to popular belief, not all monitors are rugby players. There are a few students who work on their own terms to earn extra money during their free time.

Matthew Biette, the director of dining services boasts, "The system is working well as far as we can tell. We are seeing more people with Nalgene bottles and insulated mugs for their beverages to go. One of my managers was actually stopped by a monitor this week - no one gets by them! It is fantastic."

Although the system cannot be perfect, it does provides an opportunity for students to both work and involve themselves with civic duties around campus, gives the rugby team a season that it otherwise would not have and keeps most dishes where they rightly belong - in the dining halls.