Nancy Marci, the University Food Services supervisor for Haven Dining Center, has chased down her fair share of dining hall thieves.

One night, during a dinner in Haven, she noticed a young man grab a cereal dispenser in the dining hall, then dart for the door.

‘I went behind him and said, ‘Get back here with my cereal bin!” Marci recalled. ‘And the kid kept going. He ran across the street.’

Still, Marci took the incident with a grain of salt.

‘You have to laugh,’ Marci said. ‘I mean, you’ve got to laugh. It’s funny.’

The university might not keep statistics on the amount of silverware, plates, bowls, cups and trays stolen from the dining halls each year, but, for many food services officials on campus, these thefts are simply considered unnecessary and, for the most part, odd. While officials are unsure as to the reasoning behind most thefts, they are positive about one aspect of the trend: it isn’t going to stop any time soon.

‘It definitely happens,’ said Mark Tewksbury, the assistant director of Food Services. ‘It’s not necessarily a problem.’

In many ways, the university sees these thefts as a ‘cost of business,’ Marci said.

‘(Students) see how much they’re paying (for food),’ said Mandy Lipka, a sophomore public relations major. ‘They think they’re entitled to do stuff like that.’

But Marci said this simply is not the case.

‘I don’t think people get it,’ Marci said. ‘You’re ultimately going to pay. You will pay.’

In fact, students already do. Tewskbury said he’s found that Food Services spends $10,000 to $20,000 purchasing replacement pieces for the stolen items. This cost, Tewksbury said, has already been budgeted into the steep prices students pay for meal plans.

If the trend continues, Marci said, meal plan prices could easily jump from the current price of $3,500 to $4,000 next year.

Are such price hikes a result of university overreaction? Well, no, said Tewksbury and Marci. Marci said she catches at least one or two students attempting to steal food, plates and utensils from the dining hall each day. And that doesn’t count the thieving she doesn’t notice.

‘I’ve taken spoons,’ said Erik Ostensjo, a sophomore biology major. ‘It was a spur of the moment thing. A spoon? Great, I’ll take it.’

When she does catch students, though, Marci said she tries to not be too harsh on them.

‘I try to make light of it,’ Marci said. ‘I was a kid once, too. I understand where they’re coming from.’

Still, the problem has the potential to get out of hand, said freshman architecture Ron Toledo.

‘If everyone did it,’ he said, ‘then it’d be a problem.’

For now, there doesn’t appear to be a threat of an increased theft rate, but students do continue to get caught. Just the other day, Marci said she stopped a young man stealing 12 cups from the dining hall, with stacks of six stuck up each of his sleeves. Such incidents, Marci said, are not out of the ordinary.

‘This isn’t Kmart,’ Marci said. ‘This isn’t Wegmans. You can’t take my silverware.’

Still, the fact remains that people do. And, according to Tewksbury, some times of year have higher theft rates than others.

‘We definitely lose more trays come wintertime,’ Tewksbury said, referring to the student tradition of using dining hall trays as sleds by Flint and Day residence halls.

By now, Food Services workers have come to accept the thefts as regular occurrences. For Tewksbury, who said the problem predates his arrival on campus, the thefts are a fact of life.

And with the acceptance of this fact has come the realization that, for all parties involved, the situation at least somewhat of a humorous one.

‘Ninety-nine of the time, we laugh,’ Marci said. ‘And then we say ‘Don’t do it again.”

Published on October 7, 2004 at 12:00 pm