The Colby Echo

Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: Opinions

Media Credit: Margie Gribbell

I must confess that over the past few months I have been feeding a coffee/hot chocolate addiction, which has now grown with the introduction of portable mugs in the dining halls. Previously, I would have had to sit down and consume my drink all at once. But with the mugs, I can drink at a meal, at my destination subsequent to that meal, and during all of the time spent traveling between the two. More importantly though, the portable mugs have given me an upper hand in dealing with my friends, all of whom have shiny, metal mugs from L.L. Bean, Sigg, MSR, or the like. With the portable mugs, I could take notes in class and sip away on my Swiss Cappuccino just like they had been all year long.

However, much like a group of indigenous people who get the short end of the globalization stick, my stint came to end last month. In less than a period of two weeks, we, Colby College, had successfully managed to deplete a store of 3,000 portable mugs. The week before spring break marked the nadir of the portable mug initiative, when the dining halls brought out some ceramic mugs and older gray Sodexho plastic mugs, in response to the reduction. But where could 3,000 mugs have gone in such a short time?

Thankfully, a large number of these mugs are still on the Colby campus. In fact, whenever a cup of coffee is poured, there is a lonely Sodexho mug waiting anxiously in a student's room, knowing that soon he will be accompanied by another mug. These mugs will then enjoy their respite from the hustle and bustle of Dana, Foss, or Roberts, until one day, they end up back at the source, or in a trash bin.

This last detail, unfortunately, is true and is even more disappointing than the general passivity with which some students have treated the portable mug program. Before break, Joe Klaus, associate director of dining services, had to send an e-mail to the custodians, asking them to sift through trash bins to look for discarded mugs, after he found out that students had been throwing the mugs out; hence some of the new transparent trash bags in place of black ones. And over the past few weeks, Foss has run out of portable mugs so quickly during meals that they are reverting back to the paper cups.

What I'm about to say here is not meant to be a source of comfort, but it's important that everyone knows: we are not the only school having these problems. Recently, Christine Schwartz, director of Bates dining services (who runs a similar program), told students, "This is an educational campaign, the goal of which is to help the campus understand the positive impact that they can have on the environment by just bringing back their mugs." However, Bates has been trying a different approach where in order to receive a new mug, one must turn in an old mug.

I don't agree with this method for one simple reason: we're better than Bates, and because of that, we can do better than Bates. If we consider ourselves young adults, we should be capable of using these mugs and voluntarily returning them after we're done. Every student who uses one of the mugs will return to one of the dining halls later that day or within the next day. Each trip to the dining hall should not only be an opportunity to take a mug, but also to give one back; the system can't work with only one input.

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in the March 23, 2007 online edition of the Echo.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools