Students to travel to T anzania this summer .
The baseball team moves to third place in the NJAC.
See Features page 13
See Sports page 23
Leftovers wasted daily as result of regulations Vol. CXXXVI, No. 14
April 25, 2012
Serving The College of New Jersey community since 1885
By Laura Herzog Staff Writer
Every day after work, student workers at the 1855 Room, the College’s buffetstyle restaurant located in Eickhoff Hall, are instructed to pick up two or more 14-by-7-inch trays of still-warm food and throw it all out. Rice, shrimp, potatoes or steak — it doesn’t matter. This is because health and legal issues make it difficult to do anything else with leftovers at the 1855 Room. The policy is the same at every hot-food establishment on campus: Dump what is not eaten into the garbage after the last customers leave. Employees of Sodexo, the College’s food provider, are not allowed to take food home — or even donate it. Nick Weaver, a junior psychology major who works as a server at the 1855 Room, said that the amount differs depending on the day, but normally around three trays are dumped. Meanwhile, the 1855 Room’s catering supervisor Martine Dimanche described a usual day’s waste as two pans of rice, two pans of potatoes, a pan of vegetables, sometimes a half-pan of steak, a half-pan of shrimp and a lot of soup. “It’s not just here. It happens everywhere
Photos courtesy of Laura Herzog
1855 Room employees throw out leftover chicken and rice at the end of the day on Monday, April 16. … but it’s 100 percent waste,” said Dimanche, who saw similar practices at another restaurant where she worked before being employed by Sodexo. “It’s an everyday thing. It’s not sometimes. It’s every day.” “We try to take the food back into the kitchen that’s not touched, that’s already wrapped, that’s not used … and the chef tells us, ‘I can’t use it. Throw it out,’” she continued. “That hurts. You can’t give it away. You can’t take it home. You’ve just got to throw it out.”
This kind of waste might sound surprising at a time when N.J. food banks are hard-pressed to keep up with increasing demand. According to the webpage of Sodexo’s “Stop Hunger Initiative” — which commits the Sodexo community “to fighting hunger and malnutrition” — 17 million children in the U.S. are at risk of hunger. In nearby Trenton, the number of people turning to the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen for food every day — about 600
to 1,000 people — is up “about 20 percent” since October, according to TASK executive director Dennis Micai. “We never have too much food, let me say that,” Micai said over the phone. While transporting cooked food to a food bank or other location requires planning and temperature-regulating equipment, Sodexo’s district manager Ray Encarnacion and executive director of Residential Education and Housing Sean Stallings said that Sodexo and the College would be amenable to any student-coordinated attempts to bring the unused food somewhere it could be put to use. If students showed interest in organizing transportation, whether or not the wasted food could be donated “would depend on the school’s interest and local providers,” Encarnacion said. “You have to have the right partner if you’re going to donate food … There could be some liability issues there,” he explained. Potential issues include what would happen if recently cooked food was not kept at the ideal temperature before or during the transportation process and made someone sick, Encarnacion said. For health reasons, TASK and other food banks generally ask for dry and canned see FOOD page 5
Students march in hope Adderall: the new Red Bull? of ending sexual violence By Brianna Gunter Editor-in-Chief
Ashley Long / Photo Editor
Students gathered last week to break stereotypes of promiscuity at ‘SlutWalk’ and owned an evening free from sexual violence at ‘Take Back the Night’ for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. see Features page 17 INDEX: Nation & World / Page 7 The Signal @TCNJsignal
Editorial / Page 9
Recent years show a boom in students turning to the prescription drug Adderall for exams, writing papers and long study sessions. With another round of final exams on the horizon, the College is no exception to this phenomenon. “I took it for the first time sophomore year,” admitted a junior elementary education major at the College, whose name has been omitted for legal protection. “I had a portfolio to write that I left until last minute. I had no other option but handing it in late, so I stayed up for 12 hours and wrote instead. I didn’t have a prescription. I got an A- on it, and my professor asked to keep it to use as an example because it was ‘really well thought out.’” Adderall, a combination of dextroamphetamine and amphetamine, is a stimulant used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and narcolepsy. While the drug itself is not illegal, the National Drug Intelligence Center states on its website, “It is illegal to use prescription drugs without a valid prescription or to distribute them.” It is also against the law to take a drug in a manner that is not directed, so even someone with an Adderall prescription could break the law if they inhale it or take it for recreational purposes (several students told The Signal that snorting Adderall before drinking intensified their experience and kept them awake longer). It also can come with various side effects. “If you take too much your hands get clammy. I have taken too many and I’ve vomited,” said the aforementioned junior. “Your heart can race, sometimes you can’t fall asleep.” David L. Nathan, a psychiatrist in nearby Princeton,
Opinions / Page 11
Features / Page 13
said stimulants like Adderall increase blood pressure and put those who use it improperly at risk of heart attacks. “That’s rare, but what happens commonly is that students who take Adderall and other stimulants become addicted to them,” Nathan said in an email interview. “That can be a physical addiction, where you get a ‘crash’ whenever you try to stop the medication. More typically, students become psychologically addicted, and find that they can’t study effectively without continuing to take the medication.” Adderall usually hits the campus via students with prescriptions. One College senior studying engineering — who distributes Adderall and takes it to do work — said he currently gets it from someone in his fraternity who gets it prescribed by his doctor. “(The first time) I took it at 10 a.m. and studied until (2 a.m.), and that’s when I knew — this was the drug for me,” he said in a cheerful but honest tone. He went on to talk about people constantly bothering him for some pills. “A lot of people hit me up for Adderall. In the last week I got like four texts.” Nevertheless, some see Adderall as ethically controversial. “Since I have a strong aversion to drugs and I witnessed someone crushing it and snorting it kind of like cocaine, I was taken aback,” said a senior sociology major, who also preferred her name not be included. “I guess that’s one way to get your work done but I’m opposed to it and think it’s an unhealthy option.” Nathan emphasized that Adderall is dangerous and “rightly or wrongly,” taking it without a prescription is a federal crime. “I understand the attraction of improving one’s short-term academic performance by taking
Arts & Entertainment / Page 19
El Chapin a hit Renovations coming! A thick quesadilla and Education Building and homemade guac doesn’t Cromwell are getting makedisappoint our food critic. overs, along with others. See Features page 13 See News page 5
see DRUG page 3 Funstuff / Page 20
Sports / Page 28
Performers rock Rat Opening performers got the crowd fired up for Evan Weiss in the Rat. See A&E page 19