Why Food Is Not Allowed in the Lab

Why food is not allowed in the lab?

Prateek Sangal

Senior Econ. Major

September 15th 2003

Food and drinks are not allowed in the lab because there is a possibility of damaging the lab equipment. However, students claim that snacks fuel their productivity, “Food for thought” maybe. This study does a marginal analysis of both the benefits and costs and claims that the costs outweigh the benefits and thus no food should be allowed in the lab.

The economics computer lab is located on the fourth floor of the Arts and Sciences building at the University of Akron.The lab is equipped with nineteen dell computers. This lab is extensively used by the students who are pursuing a degree in economics or just happen to be taking economic classes. One of the rules of using the lab is that no food or drinks are allowed inside. In the following paragraphs an attempt has been made in analyzing the merits and demerits of such a policy/rule.

Before any kind of an analysis can be carried out it is imperative for us to identify the people who have standing[1]. Standing refers to people who are directly affected by such a policy. In respect to the policy at hand the two parties with standing are the administration running and responsible for the computer lab i.e. the economics department and the student population using the lab i.e. economics majors and students enrolled in economics classes. In the following section we look at these two groups and try and list their benefits and costs respectively.

The Administration

As defined earlier the administration consists of the people responsible for running and managing the lab. This group includes the economics department i.e. the professors and also the graduate students who are responsible for the day-to-day running of the lab. The primary objective behind the policy is to prevent damage caused by an accidental spill of drinks onto the lab equipment. For the purpose of this study we will assume that any kind of damage caused by such an incident would force the administration to replace the entire equipment i.e. the monitor, keyboard, mouse and the CPU. The only apparent cost to implement such a policy is to have at least one graduate student sit in the lab all day to monitor the students using the lab[2]. However, we cannot consider that to be a cost either because even if this policy did not exist the presence of a graduate student in the lab would still be essential because they serve other purposes as well. Hence, this cost would be a sunk cost to the administration. The benefit from such a policy is prevention of damage to the equipment. Any attempt to monetize the costs and benefits would be futile because it is going to be hard for us to put a monetary value on the satisfaction gained from the consumption of a snack by a student inside the lab.

The Students

The student consists of economics majors and people in economics classes. The cost of such a policy to these students is the inconvenience and the loss of satisfaction from eating inside the lab. Also, some research has shown that eating snacks, like a bar of chocolate, can actually increase the thinking power and make you a little more mentally active. Hence, loss of this gain is also a cost to the students. All these costs would turn to benefits if such a policy would not exist.

Now, that the costs and benefits of the both the groups are clear to us we can further examine the merits and the demerits of this policy.

The equipment in the lab is very expensive[3]. The cost incurred will not only include the cost of replacing the equipment but also the inconvenience caused to the students due to the unavailability of a terminal. While on an individual level we might be confident that an accidental spillage would not occur we cannot take responsibility for the whole group. More statistical analysis needs to be carried out to further examine the probability of such an incident on an individual level and also on the group level, however, such an analysis is beyond the scope of this study.

Based on the above arguments and analysis it is safe to say that such a policy does make sense in the long run and we stick to the motto of “Prevention is better than cure”.

Reference:

Boardman, Greenberg, et al. Cost-Benefit Analysis. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 2001.

[1]Anthony E. Boardman, Cost-Benefit Analysis (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 2001).

[2]Alex Klepacz, Graduate Student at the University of Akron.

[3] Mr. Jay Mutter, Instructor at the University of Akron.