I need to speak up. A few weeks ago, I was robbed. There was no police report. There was no campus-wide alert letter to tell the student body that a Cornell Daily Sun columnist was robbed. My assailant is no better off, and (laughably), he claims that I am no worse off. In fact, he claims that this is a very special type of robbery which benefits me. And the environment.

No, I’m not talking about the flags. I’m talking about the trayless revolution that started at Risley. We all know that Risley is a very dangerous place to find yourself at night. Now, apart from doing your best to dodge existential debates, you also have to juggle your plates from hand to hand because Risley kids took away our trays. Ah, yes, the old struggle within. Someone, while busy thinking outside the box, came up with the novel idea of getting rid of our lunch trays. To reduce food consumption? To make our lives at Cornell a little bit brighter? Who knows?

This might have been a well thought out and well intentioned idea. Personally I doubt it. What probably happened was that a bunch of Risley kids went out into the forest naked one night and brought their lunch trays to make sculptures with. After thoroughly questioning the existence of the trays, and, perhaps, themselves, they passed out. When they woke the next morning, they found that their trays were gone. Obviously the first conclusion they came to was that their trays were missing because of some campus Eco-initiative. And so, trayless dining started.

Far-fetched? Well, it’s pretty much as reasonable as the real events. Cornell has many green initiatives and green leaders on campus, and, don’t get me wrong, some of them come up with great ideas. One example is composting food and using food waste to create biodiesel fuel. These are initiatives I can get behind. What happened with the trays was that, after hearing about it being done at other colleges, someone proposed we try it at Cornell and see what happens. Naturally, Risley students, upon hearing of some “experimentation” that had to be done, were the first to jump at this opportunity. Unsurprisingly, they found not having trays quite to their liking and assumed the rest of us would do the same.

The justification for this life altering switch? All we got were some napkin dispensers with facts about trayless dining. According to the napkins, less water has to be used to clean the trays, less food is wasted and fewer “chemicals” are used in the cleaning process. The napkins don’t make it clear whether water counts as a chemical.

Let me bring some facts to the table. The actual figures on how much less food is wasted range from 20 to 60 percent. Reading a study by ARAMARK, which provides food services to many universities around the nation, I found out that food waste is reduced by 1.5 ounces (42 grams) per person. This is how much a slice of bread weighs. Also, nowhere in the study is it mentioned if drinks are included in this estimation.

Either way, there’s nothing inherent about trays that makes them wasteful. It’s entirely psychological: you just have less space to put your food without them. Personally I think that we have all been taught a lesson and are ready to eat less, if it means that we can get our trays back. In fact, I would say that the only reason food consumption is reduced when trays are eliminated is because of the environmental message that goes along with it. And let’s be honest here. For the price of our meal plans we could eat out every night, at a place that lets us have trays to boot.

So the only indisputable evidence is that not cleaning the trays saves a few thousand gallons of water. But there are lots of things we can do to reduce water waste. We can shower less, not run the water when we brush our teeth. We can even drink less. Will any of these things make a tangible difference towards, uh, global warming? That’s what we’re fighting right? No. But they are a pain in the ass. And so is not having trays. Besides, isn’t the water used to clean plates being run continuously anyway? Are we actually saving water? And if you’re saving a substantial amount of money then shouldn’t that be reflected in the price of our meal plans? I mean, lower meal plan costs might be a bit too much to ask, but maybe you can spare me an extra guest meal? Or, if you’re feeling really kind, another dozen “off-West-campus” meals so that I can eat my lunch at Oaks instead of going down the hill during my 20 minute lunch break would be great.

Where was the outcry for the environment back when some entrepreneur decided to invent a really big plate to put other plates on? Did people not understand the harm they were doing to the world then? Or did they just think trays were really convenient? Convenient in the same vein as, say, toilets that flush. I’m sure the first toilets were environmentally dangerous as well, what with all the sewage and water. But nobody started an initiative to take them away. We designed better, more efficient toilets. Why not design a superior lunch tray? Why take it away? And what are we going to do with all the old ones? Compost them? What about the machinery to clean them? Compost that too?

I propose a new campus led green initiative: the reintroduction of lunch trays. I propose that the water used will not be substantial, and that we, as a campus, will not take that extra slice of bread. Now, who wants to be the first to give this crazy experimental idea a try? Risley, I’m looking at you.

I thank and support Cornell Dining and the campus in general for supporting student led initiatives. But not this time. I ask you: have we become trayless? Or simply heartless?