Dorm life at Houghton has changed since last semester. The student body has felt the impact of extended open hours on the weekends, yet an old open-hours standby has seen its last days. 5Bites, a student operation run through Houghton Student Enterprises (HSE), is now officially out of business.
The snack shop, previously located at the front desk of each dorm, sold items such as chips, popcorn, Poptarts, ramen, soda, and other soft drinks. Desk proctors employed by the college acted as cashiers for 5Bites. Marc Smithers, Assistant Dean of Students, stated, “The ‘desk’ has been an institution at Houghton for the last 15 or 20 years. It wasn’t till a few years after that started that we began selling things at the desk because we realized that we were paying these students to just sit there, when we could also provide another service to the students,” as well as earn money, which originally went toward hall programming. “The desk” at first existed to provide security for the dormitories. Before the swipe card system, dorms were open all day and only locked after 11 P.M., according to Smithers. “With the swipe card system, the dorms were locked all day, and ‘the desk’ began to make less and less sense,” Smithers remarked.
The closing of 5Bites was “strictly budgetary”, Smithers said. 5Bites did not cover the wages of the desk proctors, who were mostly paid through work study hours. Smithers contacted Professor Ken Bates, faculty advisor for HSE, over the summer to inform him the Student Life department would no longer employ desk proctors. Unfortunately for 5Bites, no arrangements could be made to continue selling its products.
When asked if HSE had any plans to resurrect 5Bites, Bates stated “5Bites would love to continue doing stores in residence halls, but without desk proctors, it just isn’t going to happen. If they had to hire students to man the desk, they’d pretty much be losing money.” Bates did note that HSE is beginning to expand its operations to concessions for athletic events at the Kerr-Pegula Field House.
Ashlee Duttweiler ’16 was hired to be the head desk proctor in Gillette Hall. Responding to questions of the rationale behind the suspension of the desk proctor jobs, she confirmed the issue of inadequate funding. “What concerns me the most, is that desk proctors didn’t just sell 5Bites. They also were dorm security. They were the ones signing people in for open hours,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, it’s kind of sketchy, as far as people just coming in and no one really knowing who’s in the building. I feel like there was more control over what was happening when people were at the desk and you had to leave your I.D. [with the desk proctor]. As far as safety goes, I feel like that was just better.”
Student response to the closing of 5Bites, as well as the removal of the desk proctors, as been mixed. Sophomore Bethany Schoonover observed “It’s smart for the college to have taken it [desk proctor employment] away, but that also means that students have fewer jobs.” Schoonover did not feel that the presence of the desk proctors “was stopping anything” nefarious, but rather thought that responsibility fell more onto the RAs of the residence halls.
Fellow sophomore Benjamin Eby concurred. “They [the desk proctors] didn’t really do anything. The rules keep honest people honest. At least people no longer feel patronized.”
While there is disagreement over whether the security the desk proctors may have added was necessary, the current situation will remain as is for at least the rest of the academic year.