It’s fair to say that House Professor Garrick Blalock’s tour of some of the more secretive components of West Campus has given me a new appreciation for the inner workings of the West Campus dormitories. Until last Wednesday, I was not aware of the highly secretive Quill and Dagger society. Learning about their positioning within Lyon hall, and some of their history and mysterious nature, was fascinating. More interesting altogether, though, was understanding the significance and depth of the War Memorial. I was aware of the existence of the War Memorial before the tour, but I was not aware of the book kept with the names of Cornell alumnus fallen in battle, nor the sheer decorative beauty of its encapsulating room.

But by far the most interesting thing to me was learning about the behind the scenes day to day of the dining hall staff and their procedures. If pressed beforehand, I would have guessed that the West Campus dining system was a large scale endeavor. That’s a lot of mouths to feed, quite simply. However, the care and endeavor simply required to supply Becker dining hall far exceeded my expectations. There were probably about a dozen offices, and many, many palettes of food and other supplies. From the perspective of inside the dining hall, it’s hard to get a sense of just how large the kitchen itself is. And, beyond that, it takes an entire loading dock to supply Becker and Rose Dining Halls with food. The scale of the operation was a combination of both awesome and humbling. From my perspective, and I imagine many of you, we swipe our card and grab a plate of food. It’s quite simple. Understanding the magnitude of labor necessary to make something so simple happening was a fun and rewarding experience.