I have several qualms with the arguments laid out via the Argus and Wesleying in the last couple of weeks, concerning the allegedly huge costs of tableware theft from campus dining facilities.

1) The $19K cost of stealing is distributed among all Wesleyan students on the meal plan, so it’s only about $6.90 per person per semester. Doesn’t seem like a big deal now, does it? To put it into perspective, that’s less than 1/2 of the Green Fund fee, which many feel is already insignificant.

2) Some of this “stolen” tableware, as Bon Apetit itself points out, is merely accidentally lost to trash cans. This is likely a non-trivial portion of the losses, especially for categories such as knives, forks, and spoons that easily slip out of our hands. And this share of the costs will not at all be recovered by students not stealing anymore.

3) Bon Appetit and Wesleyan are likely just taking these costs as a hit to their bottom line, and have probably even explicitly expected to encounter them in their contract. Sure, it means that they will have slightly lower profits (keep in mind, folks, that $19K is far less than one day’s operating revenue for Bon Appetit, much less for Wesleyan). However, it does *not* mean that if they weren’t facing these costs that they would start providing extra services, such as the Late Night delivery service they claim. If this were a real offer, why wouldn’t they just start charging students 5 points per semester for the right to get Late Night delivery? I’m sure there would be enough demand for it.

4) If such a large share of these stolen tableware supplies come back to Bon Appetit during or before the end of the semester, I simply don’t understand why there is more than a one-time problem, and one that should have been resolved long ago. Assuming Wesleyan students don’t take the tableware with them when they leave the University, then Bon Appetit should have great enough stocks of tableware after one semester of covering theft to cushion them against all future semesters of similar issues; ie, after covering theft costs once, they would have their standard stock plus the additional stock to temporarily replace stolen tableware, and these could be reused for every single semester afterwards.

5) Finally, if everyone’s going to talk so much about the costs, they should also recognize the benefits that this stolen tableware provides to Wesleyan students. Many would need to spend *at least* as much as $6.90 on tableware to get a set to use in their rooms, and that’s not even considering the fact that many don’t have transportation needed to get to off-campus stores to actually make these purchases. So, I would argue that the net impact on Wesleyan students of this stealing might even be positive, since the benefits outweigh the costs.

Editors’ Note: The cost of lost silverware from this semester amounts to $19,000, as The Argus originally reported. The figure of $14,000 was introduced in a Nov. 21 Wesleying post which incorrectly stated that The Argus’ figure was a “misprint.”