“In some ways it’s good, and in some ways it’s a horror show,” said Eileen Young, Dining Room Coordinator at Chapin’s dining hall about Smith dining’s new shift to the older, pre-COVID Ozzi system. With the new Ozzi program, students are able to exchange tokens for reusable containers.
Students are expected to have two tokens, which are provided to them at the beginning of the year. They are able to purchase more at the Smith College bookstore; one token sells for five dollars. Students can exchange these tokens at any of the Ozzi vending machines, which are located at Tyler, the Campus Center, King/Scales and other areas on Smith campus.
Most Smith students and staff members are clear on the intended purpose of the reinstated token system.
“It makes sense that they want some sort of centralized system,” said Annika Lof ’25. “The Ozzis cost like four dollars each, and people were just taking them and not giving them back.”
The issue didn’t just cost Smith College money — it started to become a health hazard.
“I remember at the end of the year, I was working at Cutter/Ziskind, and they came in with like a giant Ikea bag of moldy Ozzis,” said Christoper Zima, a Dining Services worker at Chapin. He explained that students had been hoarding Ozzis in their rooms, either not returning them at all or returning them when bacteria had started to form from the leftover food rotting in the containers.
However, many across campus disagree on the efficacy of this system.
“I’m not the biggest fan,” said Lof. “The machines aren’t working a lot of the time, and it gets kind of annoying […] when basically all the machines on campus are broken, it doesn’t work out with just two tokens.”
“I’m constantly getting called to run over there, unplug it, reset it, check and see if the coins are filled,” said Young, laughing. “The machines mess up all the time.”
“I think it’s nice — if anything, the new system keeps me accountable.” said Tiffany Silva-Sanchez ’23. Silva-Sanchez regularly uses Ozzis and rarely runs into issues with lost tokens or broken machines. “The coin, the little token, feels almost like I’m in a video game, you know? Like a satisfying little task.”
Many students choose to omit using Ozzis altogether. Some bring Tupperware from their own rooms, and many have resorted back to taking plates and silverware from the dining halls before returning to their rooms. An anonymous source reported that there are upwards of ten Ozzis scattered around their dorm room.
“Students find extra tokens or they come in and say the machines ate their tokens, so I have to give them more,” said Young.
Though students find the new Ozzi program inconvenient, the dining hall workers in charge of unloading the machines and washing the Ozzis have encountered a whole host of problems. The Chapin dining workers, specifically, are tasked with unloading the Ozzis from the machine in the Campus Center and bringing them over to the Chapin dining hall.
“We have to drag this huge bag all the way over here, every day,” said Young. “Drag them over, make sure the machine is full of coins and then wash them all.”
“It’s heavy!” said Teddy Martin ’25, a student Dining Services worker at Chapin. She showed a picture from when the bag split open a few weeks back, the green Ozzis spilling down the steps of Chapin. “And if everybody leaves their Ozzis full of food, or plates — people leave plates in there! — the weight of all those Ozzis, it breaks the bag.”
Though Smithies are instructed to rinse out their Ozzis, the dining hall workers confirm that students rarely do. Martin explains that she often has to dump out trash and leftovers when washing the containers.
“Fritos bags, all the time, and napkins, and the salt packets, and the butter wrappers,” said Martin, shaking her head. “I can tell where each Ozzi comes from, I know the dinner menus — I can see the leftovers. And the smell.”
“When it’s a cheese food night … ” Zima trails off. They both groan.
As for the issue of the moldy Ozzis, Martin says it has only gotten worse: “I found one, where literally half was just pink fuzz,” she said.
Dining workers are usually instructed to throw out Ozzis with mold in them. But Martin confides that her friend who works at the King/Scales dining hall was told by staff to not throw them away, due to the sheer volume of moldy Ozzis the kitchen receives.
There are also differing opinions on what changes could be made to this system. Some want a full revert back to the no-token system last year, while others want minor changes.
“You should have an Ozzi limit, and you scan them in,” Zima said. He proposed a system where students use their OneCards to scan in their Ozzis at dining halls, returning them without machines or tokens.
Others just want improvements on the Ozzi machines or for them to be more available. Despite the lack of consensus on the new Ozzi system, students and staff agree that a change has to be made.
