HDS: Feed Me, Please

The moment I have been looking forward to all day has finally arrived: Dinner time. My roommates can attest to my continual hunger and how meals are quite possibly my favorite time of the day. Besides the food, the kitchen staff, at least in Kirkland House, are some of the nicest people on this campus. Genuinely concerned about you and your day, they are always friendly and they always ask questions. They have always made me look forward to going to dinner.

However, I can't say the food has the same effect. Once I pass Roberts and chit chat with her, I enter a horribly dreadful place. And it certainly has nothing to do with the people who work there. I just think I have had enough pasta and cereal to last me a lifetime and then some, and I would rather not look at it anymore.

I recognize that preparing and cooking food for over 400 people in each house (I don't even want to imagine the Union's troubles) is a rather difficult and tedious task. Consequently, all student tastes and preferences can't possibly be satisfied. But I do feel I can expect variety in my diet. Harvard students are a little tired of having to compensate for a lack of edible food at dinner with bowls and bowls of Rice Krispies and plates of shells and marinara sauce. I do feel we need a little more.

And sure enough the dining hall administrators have responded to the call for variety with Chinese night and Mexican night and a whole slew of other adventurous nights of "interestingly different" foods. Even though I normally do not participate in the eating of these meals (I have tried but they are maybe a little too adventurous for me), I certainly admire the creativity of the dining hall administrators.

These nights usually are harder to digest for a group of students that is growing larger everyday that is seemingly completely ignored: the vegetarians. I am one of them. I have always eaten meat. My parents are big meat-eaters and we had meat in our house about three or four times a week. When I arrived at Harvard, I stopped eating meat. Not fond of the way it was prepared at this school, I decided to try and find alternatives to meat to fulfill the need for protein and to satisfy my hunger.

No problem; I did not complain then. But lately I have found fewer and fewer options in the dining halls. There is only so much pasta I can eat and so much cereal I can have. Salad is great, but lettuce and tomatoes can only go so far.

Obviously, something has gone wrong. Harvard Dining Services, blessed with some of the nicest and hardest-working staff I have ever seen and over $3,000 from each Harvard student, has not been able to satisfy the needs of its students. I am sick and tired of leaving dinner early and hungry, and I am certainly not in the financial condition to buy myself dinner each night. If I pay money for food at this school, then I expect to eat good food.

If it is difficult to cook for so many students, then maybe Harvard Dining Services should consider increasing its staff to properly serve all of its students, or at least have a more open relationship with its students and ask what they want to see at each meal. We are the ones eating it; we should probably have more of a say.

My problem is certainly not with the chefs or with the workers in the dining halls. They should be admired for their persistence under the lessthan-accommodating circumstances. Thus, part of me feels a little bad about writing this. However, we have tried to give the food here a chance--it has just been continually disappointing.

Slabs of meat available at the infamous Cutting Board night just don't appeal to vegetarians. Our only option should not be a toasted English muffin and yogurt. I have that for breakfast and I'm certainly not that crazy about it then either? Sometimes I just think that if I had those $3,000 each year to feed myself, I would do a much better job. Of course, I would still go to the dining hall to chill with the staff--they are the best part of the meals here.

Nancy Raine Reyes' column will continue to appear in the next semester.