Mad About Midd

Author: Dave Barker

Though I have already alerted the College administration and the Director of Dining Services, I felt it necessary to share with students an incident I observed on Tuesday morning while working my usual shift as a kitchen helper at Atwater Dining Hall. As I was making banana bread for Wednesday's breakfast, a pan of cooked sausage links waiting to be moved to the serving line was bumped, causing it to fall into a trash can. The links were quickly collected from the trash can and then sent to the serving line for student consumption. A few minutes later, I looked into the trash can to see that it had been far from clean; a Dining Services employee had used it earlier to discard the trimmings from raw beef steaks for that evening's meal.

Letting food for immediate student consumption come into contact with raw and bloody meat is a sanitation risk that even the most clueless chef knows to avoid. A Dining Services employee I asked about the incident replied by saying: "Oh well, I'm not eating the links." I have no idea if any students became sick after eating the contaminated sausage, but I worry that such lax behaviors could compromise this school's reputation as a national leader in college cuisine if something serious were to happen.

Sorry for jumping the gun two days early. With April Fool's Day this Saturday, my brain has focused less on textbooks and syllabi and more on brainstorming possible pranks. Sadly, practical jokes are few and far between on campus. The Frisbee-flinging Pranksters occasionally prank students now and again with nude dashes through the library or the dining hall.

I wonder, though, why can't Middlebury's ambitious and ingenious scholars scheme up pranks worthy of those at a college like MIT, where the student's best "hacks" were described in a 2003 book? The absence of an engineering school needn't be an excuse. A prank that Yale students pulled at a past Harvard football game led to thousands of Harvard fans holding up pieces of paper that combined to spell "We Suck." A well-performed senior prank would be far more enduring than a biodiesel drunk bus, this year's Class Gift. Here are a few ideas:

CSO Spring Fling II

Design a Web site on how to run a successful pyramid scheme and then put up posters around campus advertising a new Web site for job-lacking seniors, www.middalumns.com

A triple billing

Hide a CD/Alarm Clock in the concert space for the Jurassic 5 concert that would be set to go off prior to the show, playing Dwight Yoakum.

Parting words

Just as President Liebowitz steps to the microphone for his annual speech, have someone slowly drive a large-size vehicle on the edge of Voter lawn with a banner attached to the side proclaiming: "Is the diploma really worth giving up beirut?"

If your prank doesn't result in a trip before the judicial board, consider yourself a success. Don't worry: the employees at Atwater Dining Hall do a spectacular job.