A Thought About the Fountain Party

I support the groups calling for the Thesis Fountain Party to be restored, but I have to wonder, if it is such a good idea to blast the music all day long on a Monday. Some of us are trying to get work done.

A thought for next year: Have the day to turn in thesis be on a Friday.

The Stupidity of Boycotting a Dining Hall

A group professing to call itself Students in Solidarity with Workers for Justice wants us to "boycott" Frary and Frank on Wednesday. I encourage you to join the sit in protest at Frank or Frary which has been advertised here. Another, somewhat sillier Facebook event, mocks the initial boycott, too.

I've been boycotting all the dining halls all year long as I'm off the meal plan, but I'm seriously considering breaking the boycott. If I were on the meal plan, I would definitely consider going. I mean, think about it: lots of food, no lines. And you wouldn't have to deal with that filthiness that is now commonplace now that all the dining halls have banned trays.

This boycott strikes me as a silly idea for a whole number of reasons, which I have briefly considered here.

• There's no likelihood it will do any good because one dinner isn't really that big, especially when you consider that the contracts are already negotiated for years in advance.
• If Pomona unionizes its workforce, that will mean higher labor costs, which will mean a higher cost per lunch. These costs will likely get passed on to the students.
• If students were really so concerned about these workers, they would teach them English so that they could be more competitive in the marketplace and volunteer their own money to raising the wages themselves.

Now if they really want to do a boycott, they should fight for all students living on campus to have the right not to be on the meal plan and then they should boycott for a full year. That would lead to non-activist students who dislike the overcharging for food to get behind their cause and may actually lead to something more positive than the acrimonious arm bands and protests.

Of course fewer students compelled to eat at the dining halls would likely harm the workers, who we sill don't really know about. An anonymous commenter says that the workers want to use card check to unionize.

Maybe so. But until an independent group comes in and does polling, I'm going to have a hard time believing either the college or the activist student group. It's a question of incentives to lie and frankly, I trust Pomona College a lot more than I do the students. As Americans, we have the right to join a union, but we also have the right NOT to join a union.

So in other words, keep your politics off the food, please.