Welcome, Guest!
Column: It's just gross!
The word on the street is that the kitchen has become filthy. Dana Al-Qadi agrees and says it is past time for people to befriend some sponges.
SENIOR LUKE CHIANG, ever the efficient chef, offered to make toast Tuesday morning. I declined, but after finishing some reading, ambled down to the kitchen to keep him company. I noticed a package of half open frankfurters near his workstation.
“Who eats hot dogs with toast?” I asked.
Luke informed me that the frankfurters had already been there and that there had been an accident in the refrigerator. A dairy product that can often reach unbearable stenches when left out in the open, better known as milk, had spilled.
As my horrified look began to become more pronounced, I began to wildly and frantically glance around me as any character would do when their entire world was falling apart.
Could it be the kitchen was becoming disgusting?
There was caked egg on the side of the sink. There was an awful-colored substance in a cup sitting on a table that Bethany Hutchens (ever the optimist) chose to label as Green Tea, although both Tony Costa and I were wary of this label. There were pans that had not been washed. And above all, there was a stench.
I love the Uni kitchen. In fact, every time I want to celebrate my impending graduation, I quickly picture the kitchen with newly overpriced Minute Maid juice vending machines that I will be leaving behind and a little part of me cries.
I love nonchalantly mentioning to my sister that I can take food for lunch that must be microwaved and watch her sad face droop at the fact that she is stuck with cold cuts and wheat bread.
In fact, most schools do not allow their students to house their yogurt in refrigerators and heat up last night's leftovers in microwaves.
Perhaps the Uni student body is taking this little room of goodness for granted or perhaps we think that one more spill really won't be all that noticeable.
Apparently it is very noticeable. Aside from Assistant Director Sue Kovacs threatening to shut the kitchen down last week unless it was cleaned before 4 p.m. Friday, senior Amanda Grill has sent out a schoolwide e-mail asking people to clean up after themselves.
While I have come to embrace the untidy nature of Uni's open lockers and strewn couches, I also recognize that there is a marked difference between untidy and unclean or downright filthy.
Untidy can sometimes be cumbersome and annoying, such as the near trip you experience because a fellow classmate has Spanish papers spilling out of their locker.
Unclean can be disgusting and compromising, such as being afraid to inhale freely in the kitchen for fear that some spore borne from rancid milk, spoiled food, and leftover cooked egg will take over your entire body.
Our kitchen has ventured beyond the realm of forks haphazardly strewn in the wicker basket designated for spoons and into a much more sinister landscape: unhealthy.
While it would be nice if someone saw a mess and cleaned it up, we should not rely on the Good Samaritan acts of others to keep our kitchen in line.
Students should not feel the need to scrape out dried food that they neither prepared nor ate simply because they want a clean space.
If you cook with it, eat it, or drop it, then clean it.
And if you see someone cook, eat, or drop, and then run on by, do not be afraid to tap that person on the shoulder, look them square in the eye and say a nice little public service announcement of your choosing, such as, “A clean kitchen is a happy kitchen.”
I mean, it is all fun and games until someone gets E. coli, right?
