A Brief History and Commandments of the Scrounge

Walk into Commons and there's a good chance you'll see at least a few dishes sitting on the ledge of the dish return, waiting to be snapped up by hungry Reedies. Clearly, the scrounge is alive and well at Reed. To introduce new students who may be unfamiliar, and as a refresher for returning students, I thought it would be good to explain the scrounge — what it is, its history, and its norms.

History of the scrounge

Simply put, scrounging is the practice of eating other students' leftovers. If someone finds they can't finish their meal, they can leave it on the scrounge. The food then becomes available to anyone who wants to eat it. Scrounging at Reed began with Nick Heyer '67, when Heyer met a freshman on a diet who gave him her leftover food. The practice caught on, and a Reed tradition was born. In 1969, Commons staff threw a "Beggars Banquet," for the scroungers, setting up a fancy table and serving food they scrounged that evening. In 1982, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the scrounge titled "Freeloaders Ambush Paying Customers at College Mess Hall." Although sensationalist, the headline had an element of truth to it: the scrounge could get hectic at times. With hostilities mounting, the scrounge commandments were written as a sort of truce, sometime between 1984 and 1988. The commandments were hung up near the scrounge, and were revised as necessary over the years. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, scrounge trading cards — essentially Pokemon cards but the Pokemon were scroungers — were an on-again-off-again phenomenon; a scrounger's trading card could be obtained by buying them a meal. As of 2017 (the most recent evidence I could find), the scrounge was alive and kicking. 

Then the pandemic hit. The scrounge commandments were taken down, and the scrounge table became a regular table once again. For a while, it looked like scrounging was dead for good. But through a combination of word of mouth and a few impassioned MCs (I wonder who wrote them?), the scrounge slowly made a comeback, its resilience rivaled only by the immune systems of the scroungers themselves.

This leaves us where we are today; the ledge of the dish return has functioned as a sufficient replacement for the scrounge table. However, there are still no scrounge commandments. We tried to put new ones up last year, but they were quickly taken down. I'm therefore going to lay out the general principles of the scrounge in the following sections.

What should go on the scrounge?

Prime candidates for the scrounge include french fries, curry bowls, pizza, burrito bowls, tacos, sandwich halves, quesadillas, and tidbits from the Carve station (although according to the online menu Carve might have been renamed to SimplyOASIS? Sounds like the name of a pyramid scheme lol).

What should NOT go on the scrounge?

As good as it is to donate your food, there's limited space on the scrounge. As a result, lower-tier items should typically be sacrificed to the dish return to ensure that only the best bits end up on the scrounge. Such lower-tier items include things like a burger that only has a few bites left or a bowl with one piece of watermelon. And—this one should be a no-brainer—don't leave stuff on the scrounge or eat from it if you're sick.

Keep the scrounge clean!!!

This, in my mind, is the most important tenet of the scrounge. In fact, if we can't uphold this one, I don't think the scrounge should come back. When there was a scrounge table and a cohesive group of scroungers, it was much easier to keep the scrounge clean. But right now, it's pretty chaotic. The last thing the Commons staff needs is a bunch of extra dishes to clean up. I'm therefore calling on anyone who benefits from the scrounge to do their part in keeping it clean and clearing out the less good dishes when it gets overcrowded. Getting a free meal and preventing food waste is a noble cause, but it shouldn't come at the price of inconveniencing the people who keep our dining hall running.

The principles outlined above are intended to ensure that the scrounge operates efficiently. Of course, I should note that I just made these principles up (although they are based on previous sets of commandments). I'm not the czar of the scrounge—I'm just a guy who likes a free meal. Part of what allowed the scrounge to exist for decades was continuous cooperation and communication. To that end, if anyone has any questions, disagreements, or threats, feel free to shoot me an email at milog@reed.edu. Happy scrounging!