Hostel story: 5% revenue deficit in a hostel student driven mess club

Hostel story: 5% revenue deficit in a hostel student driven mess club

In 2004, I was appointed as one of the three hostel mess club's secretaries at COEP Technological University. Compared to the other mess clubs, our club had lower food quality and taste, and many management issues. However, the biggest issue that was unknown to us was the pending payment of Rs 1.5 lakh to a grain supplier, which had been carried forward from the last two years. There was no accountability for how this happened. The mess manager told me that we needed to pay Rs 10k per month and close it in the next 1.5 years. However, in a monthly budget of Rs 3 lakh, an additional Rs 10k was a big amount, especially when students (300 students in the mess club) used to make a fuss when the per meal rate went up from 50 paise. Why should this batch pay for discrepancies from previous years?

Therefore, I arranged a meeting with all the stakeholders: the mess manager, the then General Secretary (who was in the last year of Engineering), the Professor in charge, and the hostel director. After two marathon meetings spread over a week, the professors told the then General Secretary that he was supposed to talk with the grain supplier and settle it. The mess club was not going to give a single rupee, and the issue was settled. From my side, I was pretty sure there was some nexus between the three (then General Secretary, Grain supplier, & manager), and hence there wouldn’t be any further fuss from the supplier.

I could have taken the easy way out like my immediate predecessor, who didn’t do anything and happily passed his term. But doing the right thing mattered. And the right thing could be done because I got all the stakeholders on the same table (trust me, it took me three months and multiple 1:1 or 1:2 meetings to get all these reluctant stakeholders on the same table to discuss).

P.S. Below is a recent photo of hostel students along with me (extreme right) meeting in COEP. No relevance to above story