Late-night health hazards
If it’s fast, greasy and cheap, you’ve probably seen it served at a residential college buttery, the student-operated eateries that specialize in fulfilling late-night cravings. Consider the Memphis Walk, a staple of the Ezra Stiles College buttery: It’s a plate of french fries, covered in melted cheese and topped with buffalo chicken.
But a recent investigation revealed that when it comes to butteries, students may have to worry about more than calories.
When representatives from Yale Dining toured many of Yale’s 12 residential college butteries last spring, they were distressed...
Butteries...
Where Yale students go to get food poisoning and to get fat.
I don't understand why the butteries don't fall under the direction of Yale Dining. We send our kids to school with the assumption that all eating establishments on campus (although it is unclear whether they qualify under CT rules as these) will be consistent with regard to sanitation, inspection, and accountability. It would be easier for the students running the butteries if everyone was held to the same, known, standards...with peace of mind a nice bonus.
Raw Chicken? I've never seen real chicken in my buttery. Just pre-cooked "popcorn" chicken and reheatable "tenders."
And lettuce?
We're a long way from Kansas ...
Hands off our butts. This is the point of butteries- unhealthy, but oh-so-good. Like the dining services are in a position to criticize about lack of sanitation... perhaps they should work on actually cleaning our utensils before they complain about butteries putting food 14.356 inches off the floor. If they try ANYTHING here, they'll have a rebellion on their hands.
And parent/spouse, get a life.
If the butteries are filthy during the summer, it's the fault of the summer session students -- Facilities cleans them very thoroughly after exams end.
This story reads like The Jungle. Thanks YDN for bringing this stuff up in the age of h1n1 and thanks Dining for stepping in.
Yale dining is all about monopoly and wasting money; why don't they clean and sanitize their kitchen, servery, coolers,...may I go on. This is just a trick that YDS is playing to gain more ground and controls pricing, shame on you YDS
I am floored to read this article, if dining cannot provide cheap good food then what a student need to do for late night snacks? Plus it is never good to throw stones when you live in glass houses, let us tell the truth about YDS...coming soon!
Cool your jets Y11 and JiggyZ. Yale Dining is just trying to help. Offering training and reaching out to students is not the same as mandating regulations. YD also does not need to offer its wholesale buying power to the butteries. If anything, all of this is more work for dining. At least, it's appreciated by some.
Well, I saw this coming from a mile off. Even as I was interviewed for this article I could see the inaccuracies coming a mile away. The 50 degree refrigarator? Used to store sodas, bread, and processed dairy products. Meats and cold-storage items are in the freezer. Training? Yes, new workers are required to work at least two shifts with an experienced dive worker. This includes telling people to wash their hands, etc. Perhaps its telling that they haven't had a single student come forward who has gotten sick because of a buttery. This sensational yellow journalism is so low brow its disgusting. While I do not dispute some health code violations, (yup, we don't wear hair nets) others are ridiculous. Fresh produce next to meat? That would require us to stock fresh produce. We make no claims as to cooking "healthy" food but I stand by the fact that it is sanitary. How? The fact that I eat at the dive every single night! How about the hundreds of students that don't have a single complaint about the butteries? Where are those quotes? Thank you YDN for exposing a non-problem so that parents and uninformed students can point fingers at a long-standing student tradition.
Part of the problem is that buttery employees are often either not paid at all or paid only for the hours they are serving food. No one wants to mop the floor for no pay after being on their feet for hours.
If it ain't dirty, it ain't delicious.
As a former Pierson buttery worker, I'm glad we have the distinction as the only college to have met with the Yale Dining people on this issue. I'm sure some sort of brief orientation would come in handy, though in my year and a half working at the buttery (which, by the way, coincided with the quoted Alice Walton's start as a buttery worker--and I don't recall any requests for hand sanitizer) I can't recall seeing anything I would categorize as disgusting or unacceptable.
Oh, and, at least when I worked, Pierson buttery workers were required to be substitute workers for a semester before working full time, which meant days of working alongside an established employee.