When veteran culinary arts student and teaching assistant Kelly Powers ’12 finished class on her first day of school, she was dismayed to find that there was a new policy preventing students from taking food out of the kitchen in anything other than a solid, well-sealed container.
“It’s blatantly stupid,” Powers said.
But according to chef instructor Cecily Gans, the rule is a good one and will have a positive impact on the Staples community.
“Why put your classroom at risk of insects and furry critters?” Gans said.
Pests have never been a problem in Gans’s kitchen, but during the past school year, mice have been spotted in various other classrooms around the school. This resulted in an e-mail to all Staples staff members, advising them to be stricter regarding the consumption of food and drink outside the cafeteria.
But Gans says there’s another reason.
“It is unfair to create more work for the already hard-working staff members that clean and take care of our school for us,” she said.
Many teachers do, in fact, object when students bring in fresh, unwrapped food, causing a distraction.
Powers’s teachers have complained before, but her solution to that is simple: “I gave her food and she never complained again.”
Gans realizes that some teachers appreciated the treats—many thanked her personally—but they “all respect and understand the rules now.”
Meghan Fox ’14 respects the rules as well, yet she still wishes she had known before baking her first batch of cookies, which she was forced to leave behind.
“It’s easy to bring in a plastic container,” Fox said. “However, when you forget to, it can be annoying.”
Fox also added that the only pests she had ever seen at Staples were “some ants”— therefore, she thinks Staples students should be cut some slack.
“I’ve never seen the rodent problem and sometimes the cafeteria is too crowded,” Fox said.
Powers agreed, saying that she enjoyed her hallway lunches responsibly for three years, but is disappointed that “most students here are slobs and leave their trash everywhere they go.”
Gans attributes this garbage epidemic to a selfish mentality.
“Once one person thinks they are the exception to the rule, we have a problem,” she said. “Every kitchen and cafeteria should have these rules.”
If you’ve ever seen a lollipop dropped on the ground and the ensuing invasion of ants afterwards, you know that cookies on lightly wrapped plates are open invitations to creepy crawlers everywhere.