When you walk through the door to the dish room, you'll notice an arcane-looking contraption spitting out steam and spewing water onto the tiles below. You'll most likely see a build up of the night's uneaten sandwiches, burgers and meatloaf under the conveyor belt circling this 20-foot monstrosity, and then you might notice your plates or your cups or your silverware floating in circles around the beast.

You don't know it, but Sophie's Cafeteria contains one the world's last remaining metal dragons. And it's in the dish room.

Put in sometime shortly after the Jurassic period, the dishwasher for Sophie's is a loud, clunky, ineffectual piece of machinery. In fact, the whole dish room is archaic.

From the entrance door, you can see that the dishwasher covers most of the room. Starting at the ceiling, a series of leaky pipes stretch and run all over the room, some of them with hot water, some with cold and none of them marked.

In the middle of the machine, a huge column reaches to the top of the room. This column houses a chamber for hot steam, water, and soap to blast the dinnerware from the night's eating. And you can be sure that the steam and water are hot, because if you stand near it, you're going to get hit with scalding water in one of its forms.

The underbelly of the dragon is full of gauges and pipes that all look important, but after being assured none of them work properly, you wonder at the inefficiency of the whole process.

Why hasn't UT Dining done something about the monster in the cave? It sort of does the job, but using it requires a degree in nuclear engineering. For the contraption to operate properly, someone has to hit multiple levers simultaneously, dance, pray and use some of the Fonz's magic touch.

So, why hasn't UT sent a knight to slay this dragon?

Of course there's the money issue. It may not be cost effective to replace the leaky old dishwasher with a new one.

It also depends on whether UT plans on using Sophie's for years to come, or if the dilapidated dining hall is going to be shut soon. If Sophie's is going to be up and running for the next few years, a new machine might be the way to go.

The first and most important reason to dump the device is to save money on utilities. The water-breathing dragon bleeds as much H2O to the floor as it uses to clean dishes. It would be safe to say it is probably not ENERGY STAR® compliant.

And then there's the manpower needed to keep the boat afloat. Apparently, hiring someone to work in Sophie's dish room is like asking for volunteers for a root canal. Part of this comes from the deplorable working conditions in the room. People don't like having to stick their hands in people's half-eaten food only to be burnt by steam or jets of water from leaky pipes. Who would have thought?

And then there's the matter of pay. Generally, on a busy night, the behemoth requires the sacrifice of two workers at a minimum.

This Kraken can't be killed with Medusa's glaring eyes, so someone is going to have to step up. If UT plans on keeping Sophie's cooking, we should clamor for a better way to do things.

The buzz phrase of the year is "go green," but UT can't expect students to go green when it has such a monster in the closet. It's past time to get rid of it.

Send an email to utdining@utk.edu. Tell them you don't think it's right to keep an energy greedy monster chained up inside their dish room.

Try to remember the people working at Sophie's too. They have to battle the angry leviathan daily. They deserve some respect.