Tale of Two Cheenties

The basic hygiene and safety conditions of the food and water facilities in campus have been in an appalling condition for a long time. Periodic alarms raised of ants, cockroaches, and other insects in mess food or spiking of TDS levels in water coolers are things we have gotten used to. Every once in a while, messages are shared on the group informing other residents of poor quality food and water, warning them to be cautious. There is a sense of hopelessness among the students as these issues only gain attention from the authorities once a major event such as a typhoid outbreak exacerbates them. The authorities involved do the minimum to bandage the one-off events, (which often involves claiming plausible deniability) instead of improving the basic level of these facilities. There is almost never an official communication from authorities informing them of such scenarios.

This May, some external high school students (aged around 15 – 16 years) attending the PLO (Panini Linguistics Olympiad) camp got food poisoning after consuming the mess food. This, along with students residing on campus for the summer falling sick, led to the sanitation issue being brought up in an email thread and further taken to social media, where it has gained support from our student community. This article seeks to consolidate the points raised in those threads.

We aim to cover:

• Recurring Issue: Past, Present, and Probably Future
• Incident of High School Students Falling Sick during PLO Camp
• Lack of Clear, Honest and Open Communication from College Authorities
• Inability to Opt-Out Due to Mess Cancellation Policy

Recurring Issue: Past, Present, and Probably Future

2 prior articles (Water Mess and Watered Down in OBH) demonstrated how poor maintenance and communication led to people falling sick with typhoid. The articles demonstrate how water from coolers in hostels were not safe to drink from, and people had to spend significant amounts of money, over and above the standard hostel fees that includes water, to purchase water, or alternatively walk long distances to fill water from the academic block. They raise questions about accountability, given an overall broken and vague communication line from authorities. These patterns are observed all over again, with the current scenario regarding food.

Vague answers regarding tests in the messes, without significant backing, are the only things obtained from the authorities. Mentions of tests, of city-wide issues, and monitoring without any concrete evidence does not instill much faith in students living on campus. Much like the water scenario, most students are steering clear of messes, having to purchase from outside, or skipping meals altogether as rains make deliveries costlier and longer.

Given this recurring pattern, it is not much of a stretch to imagine a similar situation in the future, although the emails, social media threads, and this article all are desperately trying to prevent this.

Incident of High School Students Falling Sick during PLO Camp

High school students (around the ages of 15 or 16 years old) were hosted on our campus for the PLO Camp for a few days. It is reported that 6-7 of them fell ill with vomiting and nausea during their time here, with 2 having to be hospitalized. Given they are school children, it was likely more challenging for them to obtain food from outside, instead choosing to go to a different mess and buying bottled water for the rest of the camp. Initially, they were going to the Kadamba mess, which has been notably indefinitely closed since 31st May (the reason cited for ‘kitchen maintenance work’), and after they started falling sick, went to North mess. 

There are also suspicions that it may be the water causing the illness, as only girls fell ill, possibly owing to water they drank from their hostels. A few days after the second hospitalization, the water was given for testing, and the students were apparently assured nothing was wrong with it.

Lack of Communication 

As mentioned earlier, such email threads are common (remember the rat in the sugar jar at Kadamb?) and have been accepted as part and parcel of IIIT life. Bringing up these issues is cited as ‘spam’ by the student representative bodies, and only vague answers and assurances are given by the authorities. In fact, during the water issue previously, only when an official report was shared with the students, one of the students pointed out a flaw in the reportings of the email of the safety of the water. Now, there are no such reports yet released for the present scenario.

Likely after the illnesses, it was brought to attention that canned water was being filled in the ground floor cooler of Parijaat C Block, but not the fourth floor. None of the residents of the block were made officially aware of this until a concerned student brought up a strange odour of the fourth floor water. Only after this was it instructed by the in-charge to drink the ground floor water. Given that this was one single block with only two coolers, it was easy to track which was clean and which was not. In a larger hostel like OBH or Bakul, this may not be as plausible.

Whenever an outbreak happens where the institute can no longer claim plausible deniability, they do make efforts to fix the issues. Whether it is optics and damage control to or a genuine concern for the students that drives action we don’t know. Incentives do eventually align and result in action which we are grateful for.

However, these are fixes to the symptoms instead of the underlying causes and often don’t translate to any relevant and noticeable long term changes.

Inability to Opt-Out

Many students have been vying for the ability to cancel the mess facilities altogether, considering that they end up ordering food a substantial amount of the time anyway, and the mess service just ends up being an additional expense for no reason. When this issue was raised with the Student Parliament, their argument was that we can’t have this because the mess workers need to be paid a regular salary which can’t be guaranteed if many people cancel their meals. 

This argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding. The mess facility is for the students, not the other way around. If the system would totally fall apart the moment people were given the choice to opt out, the system isn’t really working at all. 

Perhaps the college’s interfacing with mess workers needs to be improved, perhaps downsizing is required and students can’t be offered as much choice for their meals. These are however, concerns the college administration needs to address. Whiteboxing and showing us the difficulties in the process does not change the fact that the responsibility to provide an affordable, nutritious, clean and at least partially palatable mess facility rests on the college failing which, the next best option is for the administration to not serve as an additional unnecessary expense.

Twitter thread:

Author: Anonymous