Not that this is bash Aramark day, but I ventured into Donny’s (Leo O’Donovan Dining Hall, get it?) today and was confronted with cold, cooked, broccoli. For some reason, I love broccoli, but either have it cold and raw or cooked and hot. Nothing’s worse than something that is both cold and mushy. How are you finding the new dining hall?

- Tim Fernholz, Editor in Chief

Aramark’s takeover of Leo’s is just okay, despite the sublime pasta bar. It’s going to take at least a semester before we see real changes, but more worrisome is Aramark’s old habit for questionable business practices–and a more recent taste for covering it up online.

Wikipedia’s entry on Aramark has a short section on corporate malfeasance: Aramark overcharged a prison $2 million, it’s been firing people unfairly at a hospital, and it withheld tips from hotel employees. Things might be much worse, though, because someone at an Aramark IP address has been editing damaging entries from the Wikipedia page.

This news comes from Wikiscanner, a website that links IP addresses to the anonymous edits they make. It’s not necessarily an Aramark employee or company sanctioned, but who besides an Aramark employee can use their internet access? Aramark’s vandal isn’t so much sinister as clumsy–any amateur wiki prankster knows not to just delete paragraphs. One person using an Aramark computer deleted huge chunks of the corporate malfeasance section. Later, some PR boiler plate was inserted that inadvertently referred to “our” employees.

Amusing as Aramark’s antics are, Georgetown can’t afford repeats of either their corporate dirty tricks or bumbling disinformation.
-Will Sommer, blog editor

Perhaps David Vitter isn’t the only government employee paying for sex in Washington. The Washington Times is reporting that several D.C. firehouses are being investigated for hosting female EMTs and their male johns. The Times said some firemen bought servicing.
There’s a familiar DC-is-so-whacky, Marion Barry vibe to the story, but what kind of city pays its EMTs so poorly that they need to sell themselves?

Via Why I Hate DC
-Will Sommer, blog editor