My analysis concerns an crisis that hit close to home. On Monday, November 9th, Emerson College freshman Kristin Brice spotted a mouse in the dining hall. When she went to report the mouse to a dining hall staff member, the worker told her that it was not unusual to see a mouse in the dining hall. Reports of botht he sighting and the workers response reverberated through social media, and soon most of the college had at least a colloquial understanding of the incident.
The two responsible parties took vastly different approaches to resolving the crisis..
Aramark, whose workers created an eating climate that was condusive to rodent life, issued no statement or took any action to eleviate the matter. Aramark is a behemoth corporate entity, so it is more than likely that any person with the authority to represent the company in an official matter had much more important matters to attend to. As long as their contract held (which I fault Emerson for not including passing health inspections as a term of agreement for), the company would not need to even acknowledge the Emerson student community's displeasure.
Neal Lespasio, the director of facilities at Emerson College, took measures to address the problem. He produced a quote on the record saying that ,"During Thanksgiving break we will take a significant look and clean the areas as much as possible." He also vowed to set up traps in the dining hall to catch the pests. In addition, he accepted responsibility for the action, saying that, "any abatement and cleanup is the responsibility of the Facilities Department."
Moving forward, I would recommend that Lespasio make the mouse traps as visable as possible in the dining hall. Students are already aware of the fact that mice inhabit the dining hall, so he should try to make the action his department is taking to fix the problem as visible as the problem itself. Even after taking the best action possible, a mouse could still slip into the DH, so he should try to illustrate that they are doing their best to address the student's needs.
Other than that, I would leave the situation as is. Emerson College students have notoriously short attention spans, so this crisis will likely blow over in a week when a shocking revelation about something else relevant to the school comes to light.
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