The plate pirates have struck again.
In an announcement to the entire campus community on Friday, Point Park’s food service provider CulinArt asked students to return any dishes and utensils they’re holding onto from the dining hall.
Kayla Kowalecki, director of dining services, said everything needs to be returned so the dining hall does not run out of the needed supplies to serve patrons.
“It is imperative to keep all dishes and utensils in the dining hall, to ensure availability for all patrons.”
Kowalecki did not respond to an additional request for comment.
Keith Paylo, dean of student affairs, said the announcement is normal for the dining hall and is something the university hopes to do at least once a year to remind people to not hold onto items from the residential dining facility, typically referred to as just the dining hall.
Additionally, the announcement said students can return anything they may have held onto, no questions asked.
Paylo said anybody with items doesn’t need to go to a CulinArt employee to return them. Rather, they can just walk into the dining hall and put them in the dish return area as if nothing happened.
While CulinArt employees interviewed said the number of dishes and utensils missing is noticeable, it isn’t anything close to one of the worst instances of dishes dashing for the hills.
Paylo backed this up, saying the announcement wasn’t made because of an ongoing problem, but rather to remind students not to hold onto items from the dining hall because it is not allowed.
How this gets enforced remains to be seen. Nobody from CulinArt responded to requests for comment about the situation and when employees usually report a lack of necessary dishes and utensils available for use.
One of the worst instances of plate piracy was in fall 2022, when over 950 plates went missing from the dining hall. At the time, the facility had started out with 1,000 plates and was left with only 47 remaining.
Because of this, patrons of the dining hall often had to use to-go boxes or bowls to eat food on and paper coffee cups for drinks. To-go boxes are no longer offered at the dining hall.
Students called the situation crazy, unheard of and questionable at the time, as some couldn’t understand how the problem of missing plates went unnoticed until there were less than 50 left.
Operations at the dining hall seemed normal on Monday, where it did not appear any person eating was using a bowl in place of a plate or a coffee cup in place of a normal drinking glass.
SGA will be releasing the results of its dining hall survey shortly, but it’s not known yet if the issue of missing items will be mentioned by the legislative body or if a lack of available necessities is a talking point for any participants
And as far as dishwashing goes, the dining hall hasn’t had any problems with that. No recent inspection reports of the dining hall have mentioned issues in that regard.
