This week Carmichael Dining Hall has entered the world of trayless dining to the excitement of some students and to the dismay of others. To me, the current system is imperfect since every student is paying for a dining plan that was predicated on the fact that the cost of each meal would come with a tray. While I know the cost of a tray is a rather minimal cost to a meal, why should students be forced to pay the same amount of money for less service? To answer this question, I turn to one of the environmental movement's favorite plans known to most as cap and trade.
Cap and trade is a system that sets up a specific number of permits for a certain pollutant, forcing polluters to pay additional funds to the state for emitting the said pollutant. In 1990, the United States set up a cap and trade system for sulfur dioxide to limit the amount of acid rainfall around the Great Lakes. Over the past 20 years, the program has been successful in raising additional funds for the government and lowering the amount of acid rain in the affected regions. Therefore, Democrats and eight Republicans (known to some as cap?and?traitors) in the House of Representatives used this cap and trade model to pass a bill setting up this system for carbon emissions. While the bill is currently stuck in the Senate, this bill represents a large hope for our nation's environmental movement.
Since cap and trade is such an effective model for limiting air pollution, why not try to apply the same principles here at Tufts with trayless dining? The Experimental College's class "Environmental Action: Shifting from Saying to Doing" this past fall made the decision that trays in the campus dining halls were the equivalent of a pollutant. However, instead of creating an additional fee for using trays (or more reasonably a discount for people who choose not to use trays), this group decided to create a campaign to ban trays from the dining halls. On the one hand, I admire that a Tufts course lived up to the billing of its title, and I am a big supporter of student activism. On the other hand, it is not acceptable to deny students from using trays that they already paid for. Setting up a cap and trade system for trays ("cap and tray") would solve the current dilemma.
Here is my idea for the plan. For next year, Tufts Dining Services should set two rates of billing for student meal plans: one with trays and the other without trays. As a reward, students who elect not to use trays would receive their meals at the same price as last year, whereas students who want trays would pay possibly a little more to offset the discount. When you would swipe into the dining hall, the attendant would see if you are on a trayless plan or not, and then he or she would either give you a tray or not ?? depending on which plan you purchased. Therefore, Tufts would be rewarding students who make an environmentally friendly decision, but it would not entirely take away trays from campus. I am fully aware that this system would not be perfect at first, but I am open to various ideas on implanting this system in the near future.
As the process to go trayless took place, very few students had a say in the process and reaction has been all over the board. With "cap and tray," the students get to make the choice if they want to use a tray or not, with a full cost?benefit analysis. I am sure that the rational students here on the Hill will vary in their choices, but it will fundamentally be their choice, rather than having a selected few decide their dining habits. Honestly, I have no idea what the ultimate outcome of the trayless test will be, but I believe that "cap and tray" can meet everyone's demands on campus without sacrificing the quality of our dining halls.
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