Lobbying for Lobster

Paul B. Davis ’07 is boiling. He wants lobster night to return to Harvard and has organized a campaign of pamphlets and House-list e-mails to get the expensive shellfish back on the table.

Davis was on a trip to Maine with his father when he had a revelation. Harvard students were missing something crucial: a certain crustacean. “It would be wrong for me to enjoy this lobster by myself,” he recalls saying. “I must bring this back to Harvard.”

The dinner—also known as the Harvard Clambake—traditionally occurred in September and provides a full lobster for each student. But Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) removed the clambake in 2003 because it cost approximately $30,000 and took away from other daily services on its budget.

Determined to reinstate the tradition, Davis and Kevin K. Chan ’07 have amassed a following of more than 150 students in their Harvard Coalition for the Return of Lobster Night group on thefacebook.com. They even enlisted the support of all Undergraduate Council presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

“Lobster Night is an institution. without it, are we really at Harvard?” Matthew J. Glazer ’06 wrote in an e-mail posted to several House lists.

But while emotions about the issue may run high for some, HUDS representatives urge students to remember the necessary trade-offs.

“We have to make big decisions...to meet the greatest needs of the greatest number of people on the greatest number of days,” says Assistant Director of Marketing Crista Martin. “Do lobsters one day translate to grilled chicken on a daily basis? Yes.”

Martin cited student survey responses as part of the reasoning for the change.

“We don’t make these decisions blindly,” said Executive Director Ted A. Mayer. “You look at ways to balance the cost of everything...the lobster night was one big hit.”

Members of the I Hated Lobster Night group on the thefacebook agree. Creator Lucy F.V. Lindsey ’06 call the clambake “an extraordinary extravagance...like sending out hideous diamond necklaces to incoming freshmen. Gross.” The group currently boasts five members.

“Lobster night was one of those few campuswide events that excited the entire campus,” Ian W. Nichols ’06 wrote in an e-mail. He also pledged to “argue for [its] return on the basis of campus life benefits, educational benefits and mental health benefits.”

“We’re on the East Coast where lobster is plentiful and is part of the New England experience,” wrote Teo P. Nicolais ’06. “Lobster has a campus unifying effect unlike any other crustacean.”

Chan, one of the founders of the lobster advocacy group, has proposed implementing a $10 opt-out fee for students to fund the “monumental college experience...we’ll always look back on.”

But HUDS representatives are not promising lobster night’s return.

“We hear that people would love to have lobster and it’s not that we don’t hear it, but it is a matter of listening to 6,600 voices,” said Martin. “It’s your whole year experience that is of greatest importance.”