Welcome back!

Welcome back, students!

You’ll notice some changes (for the better) this year as you adjust (or readjust) to campus life. First, and probably most noticeable, will be the new dorms. They are big, brick, and not quite finished (paper on the windows, anyone?). Apparently there are also some issues with the temperature control systems, but presumably this will be repaired in the near future. If you live in one of these dorms and have details, please comment and let me know.

When finished these dorms will have a number of green features, the most prominent being the geothermal wells that were dug in the baseball field last year. These magically create energy by sending fluid through a series of pipes buried in the ground, where it is heated by the more constant temperatures farther down, then brought back up to heat and cool the building. Voila! If you want a more scientific explanation, check out wikipedia.

The second big change occurred in the dining hall. Aside from the fact that it moved and the floor now bounces, within the next few weeks you will also see that the trays are slowly disappearing. As are the take out containers. From now on, if you want to take food from the dining hall, you will need to put down a $5 deposit for a reusable container, which will be yours for the remainder of the year. Well, sort of. Don’t go writing your name on it yet, because when you come back to the dining hall you’ll drop it off and take a new, clean one, and leave yours to be washed. And you can keep doing this all year, as long as you always bring one back with you. Otherwise, you’ll have to put down another deposit. You’ll receive all this back at the end of the year, so no worries! You won’t actually be out the money.

So what’s the deal with hiding the trays and containers? Well, dining halls that remove their trays have found that not only do they save money in washing the darn things, but that students tend to only take as much food as they can actually eat, instead of piling up four plates and then throwing half of it away. So it saves food, as well- and has the additional benefit of cutting calories for students who may be worried about the freshmen 15 (plus you burn more calories walking back and forth to the food).

As for the takeout containers, the answer should be simple. We’re creating less waste by not throwing them out! Even the biodegradable containers we’re using right now use a lot of energy just in the process of being created, whereas with reusables you only need to make one container, one time- as opposed to several hundred over the course of the year. This is an enormous leap forward for our campus- and for the environment!

Keep checking back for more details on how the system works…