WaPo highlights a move by some colleges to eliminate the cafeteria tray as a way to reduce dishwasher use and food waste. North Carolina schools are implicated but not named.
Well, it may save dishwashing soap, but I don’t think plus-or-minus a tray ever had any effect on student appetites, not when I was in college.
From what I saw on campus tours last year, it wasn’t enough to convert traditional (boring, but efficient) linear cafeterias into faux-mall food courts; the resulting congestion at lunch didn’t seem to slow down student consumption, just made it more troublesome. Now we’ll add juggling plates, utensils, and beverages with the inevitable mound of bookbags, calculators, and other student impedimenta, and see how the students like that when they try to grab lunch in twenty minutes between classes.
D-u-m-b idea.
