In my humble opinion Teenage Wasteland

Author: Daniel Roberts

Every Thursday when The Middlebury Campus newspaper comes out, a truly woeful process of misery unfolds.

Basically, every kid that walks into a dining hall grabs a paper from the rack, regardless of whether or not they plan to read it.

Each person brings the paper to the table and reads maybe one or two articles. Then they get up, leave the paper on the table and hurry off to class. Immediately, a dining hall employee swoops in and proceeds to crumple up the discarded paper and throw it in the trash.

The result is that by Friday night at dinner time there are no more papers to be found anywhere in the dining halls, and yet almost no one even got a chance to read it. The copies have disappeared. Where did they go? They relocated to their new homes - trash bins - where they will enjoy retirement with other residents of the trash, including Forth 'n Goal postcards and dining hall comment cards that beg for juice at dinner.

This is not the fault of the dining employees who trash them, but the students who carelessly leave them on the tables. Is it so difficult to return the paper? The dining hall employees already think we are spoiled brats - this stuff doesn't help.

With so much paper and money wasted, it almost seems The Campus should be online-only, and if people want to read it, they can visit the Web site. Of course, we all love having a hard copy of the paper in front of us, so that wouldn't work. I guess people just have to cut down on their waste.

This all relates to a larger problem at Middlebury of increasing waste. I myself am guilty of the "food waste" that happens when I finish my lunch or dinner and I go up to get more. I always re-fill my entire plate, return to the table and sadly realize I was only hungry for a little more - not an entire second plateful. Inevitably I fork around with what I've got and then bring the dish to the window. Big waste, and I'm guilty about it, but it still happens.

Then there is "Halloween waste." I'm talking about pumpkins - the ones people harvest only to have them painted or carved and placed on a doorstep until they rot. Sure, it's a fun tradition to make jack-o-lanterns but (sorry to be such a Debbie Downer) it's a huge waste of food. Wikipedia says a pumpkin can be boiled, baked, roasted or mashed into a pie or soup. Pumpkins are even a sweet delicacy in many Middle Eastern countries. I bet in those countries people would never dream of wasting food the way we do, by growing pumpkins only to carve them up.

Finally, we also see financial waste at Middlebury. The College, for example, spent $20,000 to fund "Solid State Change." Let's just say that money could have been better spent and leave it at that. Yes, visual art is stimulating and important, but it should never be as important as giving students the basics. That is to say, certain items available in the past (trays, juice at dinner) should not be taken away in order to "save money" if the College has so much green to spend on fancy art. "Different funds," they insist, but fine, take some "funds" from the College's art wallet and slip them into the dining wallet.

I'm just saying that we waste a lot here. Let's work on it - I'll waste less food, and everyone else, for the love of Ron, fold that freakin' newspaper and put it back on the rack.

Daniel Roberts is '09 is an English major from Newton, Mass.