The recent decision of the Vassar administration, with the assent of the Vassar Student Association (VSA), to give Aramark an exclusive contract for food services on campus is outrageous to me as a student. I have seen how Aramark treats the campus dining workers, how managers abuse their power daily and how students are used by the company as a hammer against workers instead of the company actually serving students.

Without proper disclosure to the public of the proceedings, the administration and the VSA essentially worked in the shadows to O.K. a company most students oppose vehemently. Where was the student voice pushing against the administration and calling for greater scrutiny of Aramark?

Well, it was certainly not VSA Vice President for Student Life Morgan Warners ’08, who was one of only two students to sit on the committee that approved Aramark’s new contract. Warners was quoted in the article “College to Renew Aramark’s Contract” (4.17.08) as saying, “I really wanted to find which [companies] were speaking to Vassar’s culture.” With all due respect to Warners, “Vassar’s culture” is one of liberalism as well as pro-worker and anti-corporate sentiment. “Vassar’s culture” is about the union of all members of the community against a pro-corporate administration and a corporation with a bad history of abusing workers, both here and on other campuses.

“Vassar’s culture” is about questioning authority and having a high-level public discourse that looks at all angles of an issue and allows the public to express its views in the sunlight, not in a smoke-filled room in the back of the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC). “

Vassar’s culture” rejects gimmick events held by Aramark at ACDC to win student support and instead encourages real sustainability and local food production. At least that is the Vassar culture I believe in. Apparently it is not Warners’.

Neither, sadly, does it appear to be Nate Silver ’10’s view of what Vassar should look like. He is the Chair of the Food Committee and the other student representative on the committee that gave Aramark its new contract. Silver, as quoted by the same Miscellany News article, is shown to be extremely positive about the management of campus dining services. Director of Campus Dining Maureen King is presented, both by Silver and The Miscellany News, as a hero. She is seen as an efficient manager. Warners supported this view as well, calling her “fantastic.” Silver reinforced this by saying that King and her managers understand the community better than most faculty members.

I hope not, Silver, because this community’s values differ quite significantly from Aramark’s corporate vision. King is truly efficient, if you care for her type of efficiency. I do not.

I, unlike Warners or Silver, am in ACDC every day, fighting alongside workers against bigoted, abusive, “efficient” managers who fundamentally do not understand the Vassar community.

Workers constantly complain to me that their managers are getting away with more than is legally or ethically appropriate.

Silver seems not to understand the Vassar community very well, for Aramark is an evil corporation that has no stake in the community, unlike the workers it oppresses. The administration is in bed with Aramark. So, it might appear, is the VSA, when the only two representatives of the student body in this matter are obviously pro-corporate. So too does The Miscellany News seem to be in bed with the administration and Aramark, as it only has glowing things to say about the company. Apparently like the VSA, the paper cares nothing at all about Aramark’s corporate abuses off campus, or for that matter, the ones that take place daily on the Vassar campus.

—Christopher Binetti ’08