Not being a morning person, I usually will go to great lengths to avoid waking up before 8am. However, I could not pass up the opportunity to see the inner workings of Middlebury’s Ross dining hall. Dining hall culture, especially at a school as small as Middlebury, is an integral part of student experience, and I was curious to see how the dining hall operated.
When my alarm went off at 5:45am I briefly regretted my decision, but this was quickly replaced with feelings of excitement and curiosity. As I walked into Ross, I immediately noticed it was being cleaned by a crew of several women. It appeared as though they had been working for a while. I realized that I had never even thought about who cleaned the space where I eat every single day. This probably remains a hidden space of work to many students, yet it impacts their daily living.
After Chris, the head chef of Ross, gave us a tour of the facility, we each paired off with a worker. I had the pleasure of working with Dave, making omelets and deep frying potatoes. At first I was very nervous about making conversation and felt uncomfortably aware of our differences. However, Dave was incredibly easy to talk to and conversation came naturally. We quickly bonded over our shared love of Nordic skiing and hiking.
Although my conversation with Dave ran the gamut from growing up in Vermont to our plans for Thanksgiving, it did tend to gravitate back towards his experience as a worker in the dining hall. Before coming to work for Middlebury four years ago, Dave worked in dining halls at Saint Michael’s College and Champlain College. He said that although Middlebury’s food is not perfect, it tends to be much fresher and more nutritious. Dave has a friend who works at the dining hall at Sterling College, a very small college in rural Vermont. Sterling College has only 100 students and farm work and producing food arean integral part of its curriculum. This led us to discuss the role of scale in dining systems, and reminded me of our class discussion about the Jackson article. We talked about the monetary realities and difficulty of creating change across large scales.
While touring the workspace, Chris noted the tightly spaced pathways and said that the work room often became quite crowded. Dave and I were working off in a side area. Even with just two of us in a small nook, I often found myself quickly side stepping to avoid colliding with the hot pans Dave was carrying. I was reminded of “Abolish Restaurants”. In my experience, the tight space did not cause much trouble, but I could see how conflict could easily arise in such conditions.
My morning in Ross was incredibly informative and rewarding. It certainly made me rethink my relationship with the workers and the space I interact with every single day.

I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment.