One student later wrote him to take most of the blame for the incident, according to Pertile.

Pertile later said the incident “didn’t repeat itself––it was always reasonably clean and tidy.”

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Though students ranked the overall dining experience 2.66 on a scale of one to five—with one being excellent—according to a HUDS survey this spring, unwelcome houseguests suggested there is still room for improvement.

Dunster and Mather House were forced to temporarily close their dining halls last winter after at least 16 students who had eaten at the dining halls were hospitalized with gastroenteritis.

Students arrived at University Health Services suffering from diarrhea, vomiting and stomach cramps.

Analysis of samples of dining hall food by the Massachusetts State Laboratories were inconclusive, said Environmental Health and Safety Services Director Joseph Griffin.

“It could have been a fast-moving virus which could or could not have been related to the food,” he said.

Up in the Quad, Cabot House residents this spring dealt with a fruit fly infestation and a mouse in their dining hall.

The fruit fly infestation was caused by a design feature in the kitchen that is being renovated on the first day after Commencement, Griffin said.

It was traced to the existence of “a compost-like situation” in abandoned dumb-waiter shafts and trap doors, according to Gary D. Alpert, Harvard’s chief pest-control official. Alpert also said the infestation posed no health risks.

A month after the fruit fly incident, a mouse scampered across Cabot’s dining hall floor. Alpert said the mouse had probably been displaced from its home in Pforzheimer House by drilling that had begun as part of this summer’s large-scale renovation of all three Quad dining halls.

The mouse’s hole has since been sealed up.

Griffin called the proliferation of health concerns “unusual,” but said they are unrelated to each other.

The Fork Ran Away With the Spoon