In “Scraping Our Own Plates Would Not Gratuitously Imperil the Liberal Arts,” Mr. Owen seems to have forgotten that Pomona College provides each student with “full-service treatment” because each student pays $34,810 every year. Some of us, in fact, must mortgage our futures to pay for our present education.

Just as a patron at an expensive restaurant expects quality service as well as a delicious meal, a student who must pay $34,810 per year at Pomona College should expect a “full-service lifestyle.” The sense of entitlement in this case has nothing to do with elitism or snobbery; on the contrary, it is morally justified. If all of the services we receive were free, then feeling entitled to them would indeed be repugnant and doing things like scraping our plates would be expected.

Alas, the reality is that room and board cost all of us money—$8,950 a year to be exact. The woman who cleans your bathroom? You’re paying for her. The man making you omelets? You’re paying for him. The man cutting the grass and pruning the flowers in your courtyard? You’re paying for him too.

This copy of TSL you’re reading? You’re paying for it as well, via $260 per year of student fees.

It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that scraping one’s plate would “perhaps . . . free up an employee for more productive and rewarding contributions.” A student is paying that employee to scrape plates, wash dishes, wipe counters, and empty trashcans—that is how the employee is supposed to make “productive and rewarding contributions.” Does that make the student any better than the employee? No, because both are equal members of a voluntary economic exchange. Is it degrading to scrape and wash hundreds of plates? No, because doing so is called good, honest work, and such work is noble. Students like Mr. Owen show not only disrespect but pity for people who choose to work hard to support themselves and their families at a job of their choosing. To feel pity for another person, especially when pity is unjustified, is condescending, and the resulting action, such as scraping one’s one plate, is even more so. No one wants your pity, Mr. Owen, or anyone else’s.

If it gives people like Mr. Owen a sense of magnanimity and benevolence to scrape their own plates, may I recommend that they build, mud brick by mud brick, a new dorm on a hill, where they might gather their own berries and hunt their own meat, where they might spin their own cloth and sew their own underwear, where they might fully take advantage of their “daily responsibilities”—all while continuing to stay on the meal plan and to pay the full cost of their education at Pomona College. Only then may all the employees of the College enjoy the full benefit of their gracious charity.

Sincerely,
Dorothy Lam ’05