UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #584
McCUTCHIN, RHETA

McCUTCHIN, Rheta (1934-2007)
Undergraduate student; Food Service Director
At UW: 1952-1956; 1958-1994

Interviewed: 2002	
Series: Housing
Interviewer: Eric Olmanson
Length: 2 hours, 4 minutes
	
In her 2002 interview with Eric Olmanson, Rheta McCutchin, UW Alum and Food Service Director talks about her time at the UW both as a student and employee, the changes of the food service at the UW during her career as well as how the UW services compared to that of other schools. She also talks about student employees, and general behavior of students during the decades.
							
Undergraduate education in institutional management and dietetics; Internship; Appointment to the UW; Changes in food service during her career; Flexibility of UW food service in comparison to that of other schools; Student input into food service; Student behavior during the period of campus unrest

Interview Session (May 24, 2002): Tapes 1-2

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:27	The interviewer gives some background concerning the interview.

00:01:14	Rheta McCutchin explains that she grew up on a farm in Wisconsin.  When she came to the UW in 1952, she stayed with her sister rather than live in the dormitories.  She worked her way through school as a waitress and bartender at the Madison Club.

00:02:20	After RM graduated in institutional management and dietetics in 1956, she spent two years at Indiana University, Bloomington working as a food service manager in the dormitory system.  In September 1958, she returned to UW to accept a position in the residence halls.

00:03:15	She explains the first positions she held at UW.  After the southeast dormitories were built, she became food manager for the area.  She describes several of the area supervisors.

00:06:21	RM describes some of the challenges she faced in her first few years.  She explains that according to the original plan, the 3200 students were to be divided between six dining rooms, and therefore 500 students were assigned to each dining room.  Because none of the students wanted to eat where they were assigned, the six dining rooms were reduced to four dining rooms with extended hours, and students were allowed to eat wherever they wished.

00:10:10	When RM arrived at the university, she was an assistant food manager.  She explains some of the other titles she held during her career.  After a major restructuring in the early 1970s, she became the first food service director.  She had an assistant director for each of the two main areas, the lakeshore dorms and the southeast dorms.

00:14:54	RM explains that she was food service director and assistant director of residence halls when the student protests began.  Shortly afterwards, she and Bill McKinnon decided to change the food service plan.  The previous payment system had been based on the assumption that a certain number of students would miss every meal; students were not allowed to carry food out or to feed their friends.  About 1972, they shifted to a point system.  Eventually they began to price items individually, which allowed students much greater flexibility.  She says the other Big Ten schools thought housing officials at UW were insane for choosing such a system.

00:19:05	RM describes the administrators involved in the decision to switch to the new system.  There were some difficulties with the new mechanical cash registers that were needed for this system.

00:20:45	Students were allowed to eat in whichever cafeteria they chose.  She relates an anecdote about one food manager at Chadbourne who had old-fashioned tastes in food.  RM jokes that the pizza restaurants in town could have been paying this manager to serve fried fish or liver and onions on Friday nights.

00:22:28	When RM arrived at UW, she worked at Kronshage Hall, which housed 640 men.  She added more choices to the menu in response to the growing ethnic diversity of students.  Other food managers would not combine foods such as bacon and eggs because of the limited grill space, but RM caused a commotion by finding a way to do this.

00:26:05	RM describes her work as a waitress and bartender at the Madison Club while she was an undergraduate.  As a food manager at UW, she never wanted to compromise on the quality of food, and she believed that the residences should accept the best bid rather than the lowest bid.  She says students could tell when a substitute for a name brand, such as Heinz ketchup, was served to them.  She compares the excitement over ketchup to the uproar she caused in the early 1990s when she ordered three-tined forks, which the State Journal referred to as "threeks" in an article about the incident.

00:30:50	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:30:58	RM continues to talk about the “threeks” episode.

00:31:33	In about 1975, the Central Commissary was established, which meant that food preparation was centralized at Gordon Commons and then delivered to the other cafeterias.  This new system met with some setbacks: a truck driver known as “Wild Bill” once drove too recklessly and ruined some pies while driving them to Chadbourne.  RM describes new products and equipment available at this time.

00:35:20	RM says students began to want food at all hours of the night.  Food service responded by opening convenience stores and establishing a pizza and sandwich operation.  She explains how she researched various types of pizzas, purchased pizza ovens and tested products on students.

00:37:30	She describes the testing sessions that were held weekly.  Students on committees were encouraged to express their opinions about the food service as well as other aspects of housing.  After the student strikes, students became more vocal about their wishes.  RM would respond by requesting that the students present her with a petition demonstrating widespread support for their ideas.

00:41:30	Some food managers wanted to teach students about nutrition, but RM did not feel students were interested in this information.  She figured they would eat whatever they wanted.

00:42:37	RM talks about changes in dining manners and traditions.  At Kronshage Hall, where students ate at long tables, the students used to play a trick on the person sitting at the end of the table by shoving him on to the floor.  Initially students scraped their plates into the garbage in the dining room, but this process was then shifted into the dish room.  She felt that this was not done in a restaurant and also should not be done in a cafeteria.

00:44:34	After she moved to Elm Drive, she found much better dining facilities.  She describes the dining rooms at Gordon Commons.  It took two decades for the dining rooms to be carpeted as she wished.   Gradually smaller tables were also introduced, which gave students more privacy.  She surmises that these new facilities improved dining manners.

00:48:01	Student behavior was very disruptive during the student strikes; students would dump trays on the floor, flip their butter pats onto the ceiling, and squirt ketchup packets around the room.  Some cafeterias began providing only paper plates and plastic cutlery.  For a period of six weeks, no food was served without the police present. 

00:53:52	RM mentions Ben Masel, a student who lived in Sellery Hall who caused a lot of mischief.  He and his friends used to give the cashiers a stack of meal tickets, each of which had only a few cents on it.  RM would not let them slow down the line as they hoped to do.  Some students at Kronshage once released a dozen white mice in the dish machine on the dish line.

00:55:57	During the strikes, students tried to prevent delivery trucks from dropping off supplies at the cafeterias.  RM talks about the difficulty she had in arranging for deliveries.  Students would also cause trouble in Kohl’s stores in Madison because it was the main food supplier to housing.

00:59:31	One of the more serious incidents involved students tipping over several tables in a cafeteria. 

01:01:54	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

01:02:15	RM talks about how the food service started a catering business in the 1980s.  The first major event it catered was an annual meeting of the University of Wisconsin Foundation while Irving Shain was chancellor.  She recalls that Chancellor Donna Shalala had exacting standards for decor and food.

01:11:25	On one occasion, a financial expert attempted to consolidate the food service and to introduce many new convenience foods and new equipment.  RM did not think the changes beneficial, although in general she believed in changing with the times.

01:16:30	RM lists several of the college food service organizations with which UW was associated.  She mentions one food supervisor at Northwestern who was unresponsive to the ethnic makeup of the population he served.

01:18:42	Food service managers at other schools often did not want to make major changes, and UW was unique regarding the flexibility of its food service.  RM always believed in giving students exactly what they wanted.  For example, when students wanted to watch television while eating, she installed television sets in the dining rooms.

01:22:02	A group of 1800 to 2000 bankers stayed in the southeast area for two weeks every summer for banking school.  They were so impressed by the food service that they brought the food manager from their home university to visit the UW.

01:24:24	RM lists some of the other groups who used the food service during the summer, such as youth groups, music clinics, and conferences.  The kitchen was not air-conditioned because the southeast area was built on the principle that no conferences would be held there, although this principle was broken after only a year.

01:29:45	RM describes her relations with the purchasing department.  She mentions some of the difficult decisions she had to make, such as how to deal with poor quality supplies.

01:32:59	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

01:33:06	RM once angered a supplier by returning poor quality food.  She always demanded that supplies meet the standards set by the samples the companies had provided.  Buying produce was particularly difficult.

01:39:03	RM discusses the food suppliers with which she dealt.

01:43:30	RM comments on the scope of the food services and estimates the number of employees she had by the time she retired.

01:48:28	Her high school education was not very strong, she recalls.  A combination of a scholarship and work allowed her to attend college because her parents could not support her financially.  It was Professor Beatrice Donaldson David, the head of the institutional management department in the School of Home Economics, who encouraged her interest in dietetics.  David helped RM to obtain an internship at Indiana University.

01:54:05	RM makes some general comments about her career.  In comparison to other schools, UW offered her a greater chance for innovation.

01:55:58	Her internship in a hospital convinced her that she never again wanted to work in a hospital.

01:58:42	Gordon Commons often had a mouse problem, RM remembers.  At one time there were so many mice that the employees named them.

01:59:46	RM makes some final comments about the decline of loyalty among employees.  She mentions her successors and some of her retirement activities.

02:03:55	End of side.  End of tape.

END