Basted!

Students returning to Cambridge after the long months of summer have come to expect an array of pleasant novelties waiting for them—from renovated rooms and dining halls to the flush green lawns of the Yard in autumn. This month, though, students were greeted by a stark void in their culinary lives: the Chick-Fil-A franchise, last seen standing proudly in the Science Center’s Greenhouse, silently disappeared from Harvard’s campus some time after Commencement. It will be missed.

No longer can undergraduates sink their teeth into that scrumptious breaded chicken filet, nestled in warm buttered rolls along with lettuce, tomato and two happy pickles. Waffle fries, as heavily-crisped as they were salted, are gone from our lives. Nuggets are nowhere to be found.

The loss of Chick-Fil-A has been accompanied by any number of Orwellian excuses from the masterminds in Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS). In their brave new gustatory world, the sandwich we all loved so well has been replaced by “healthier” offerings—options like salads that bear an eerie resemblance to their wilted counterparts in the dining halls. The Greenhouse, once a welcome refuge from the existential despair of HUDS’ ineluctable menu cycle, has been colonized by the enemy.

And has HUDS no compassion? Walking through the Science Center’s technological cavern, we may still hear the plaintive ghosts of problem-sets past, but the band of sandwich-boarded bovines imploring us to “EAT MORE CHIKIN” has been silenced forever. In their stead, among other new selections, Harvard’s students will encounter seasoned-beef burritos and tacos at the new Catalina Cantina—a substitution touted as salutary for us, and admittedly a toothsome one, but one that will do sadly little for the health of those beloved spokes-cows.

It is no doubt far too late to save Chick-Fil-A. Those of its appreciators who remain will have to travel miles, to Burlington or Peabody, for a fleeting assignation with that dear, dear sandwich. And those faithful numbers will dwindle with each coming month, as a delight we took for granted recedes into the fog of memory. The Class of 2007 is already here: 1600 bright, innocent stomachs for whom a Harvard Chick-Fil-A is no realer than parietal rules or a Dean of the College who is not also in charge of undergraduate education. The Greenhouse’s Chick-Fil-A is a thing of the past, but we would all do well to think of it the next time our bellies growl: after all, they didn’t invent the chicken. Just the chicken sandwich.