Concentrating on Food

Last fall, almost a quarter of the undergraduate population participated in the Entrée Preference Survey conducted by Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS). Since no one would expect HUDS to read through each and every open-ended response, one might have expected few students to bother giving long and creative answers.

Yet, Harvard being Harvard, many students expressed their feelings with commendable wit and vigor. Then, in an initiative of debatable value, HUDS decided to print for each dining hall a veritable tome of 135 single-sided pages containing every single response to every question on the survey—and hidden among the rough are some gems representing the entire spectrum of academic disciplines.

Dramatic Arts: “The lack of (non-breakfast) bacon within your walls fills me with an ire and misery almost too painful to recall. More bacon! I require more bacon at the salad bar (real bacon, not the synthetic trash you dole out in clumps, like the artificial ‘beggin strips’ thrown to dogs on daytime television). More steak sauces! Where is my beloved, A1 with her delicate hands, and ever-shifting countenance (bold, spicy, rich and tangy!!)?”

Biological sciences: “Eating Thai food is like a long orgasm.”

Applied Mathematics: “The real problem with the entrees is that dining services has five different names for each of six different things, and those supposedly amount to 30 entrees in the menu cycle.”

Philosophy: “Why must the sticky rice be so very sticky??”

History and literature: “Quincy dining hall, also known as either the Ellis Island of the dining hall world—give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses...the wretched refuse of your teeming shore—or, to the less historically savvy, the worst dining hall in the world, is in need of more improvements than possibly can be suggested within these scant margins...Food shortages occur in Quincy House with a frequency that has not been realized in the United States since sometime in the 19th century.”

Asian studies: “I am very offended by the Asian Taiwan noodles. I have never EVER seen those noodles in Taiwan and they are most certainly NOT called that. They taste disgusting and poorly represent Taiwan.”

Statistics: “Can you please, please add Honey Bunches of Oats to the cereal rotation? I know these things are done on the basis of preference surveys, but I’ve done some fieldwork of my own, and I can assure you that Honey Bunches of Oats is a surefire crowd-pleaser.”

Social policy: “YOU CANNOT HAVE FAIR TRADE COFFEE ONLY TWICE A WEEK. Purchasing fair trade coffee represents a commitment to the well-being of coffee producers. It is a moral stance. Your stance, then, is that you sort of care about the well-being of coffee producers, but only enough to pay for fair trade twice a week. You have put a price on the well-being of human beings.”

East Asian languages and civilizations: “A haiku, ‘Cinnamon roll.’ O cinnamon roll / Sweet and delicious you are / I crave you Wednesdays.”

Women’s studies: “Some of the male kitchen staff act in a manner that is rather obtrusive and which makes me and my girlfriends exceedingly uncomfortable. i know, you feed me every day so i am polite to you—but that does not mean you have the right to ogle me unabashadly and attempt to give me a hug every time you see me. i am NOT your friend, i am your...client.”

Literature: “I feel that your dishes are lacking in originality and embellishment. Your culinary lassitude is deplorable. My palate must needs [sic] seasoning! Too long have I been forced to lamely gum down your pasta-jelly like some dyspeptic retirement cronie. I need not enemas, I need spice! Are we not good enough to taste the smart bite of but a little peprika? Is cumin too high, nay, too noble for us to delect? Where is oregano, with her gentle paws, lingering like flapdashes upon my breast (of chicken)? Oh heaven, why must my salad go alone and plain into the cold cold night? Bah! Tell the scullery maid to away to market and fetch us some life!”

—David M. DeBartolo was editorial chair in 2002.