Consumption, HUDS-style

Dining at Harvard used to be a classy experience. Very little about the Harvard of 2007 recalls the glory of our college’s more genteel days. Once resplendent, Harvard’s dining halls have surrendered the patrician in favor of the high-tech and the modern. Those tempted to doubt the completeness of the transition need look no further than Harvard University Dining Service’s (HUDS) recent purchase of 13 flat-screen televisions and accompanying interactive digital kiosks.

Of course, Harvard’s retreat from the classy may be obscured by what would seem to be the larger problem with this purchase. Although HUDS has not disclosed the price it paid for this substantial acquisition, these televisions and kiosks usually retail for a combined minimum of about $75,000. For an organization that continually cites lack of funds as a justification for its refusal to expand dining hours and options, such a purchase seems to reflect a poor sense of priority. Even though these monitors and kiosks were purchased with proceeds from retail operations designated for special projects, these new additions to our 13 campus dining halls—which enable students to order bagged meals and retrieve nutrition information, which is already easily accomplished online—don’t offer any new services or conveniences to justify the expenditure their purchase entails.

While the purposelessness of the acquisition—and the odd sense of fiscal priorities it represents—might be misinterpreted as the source of our frustration, this lack of nuance wouldn’t do justice to our much more discriminating taste. In fact, it is the symbolic significance of the monitors and kiosks that disturbs us most.

Back when Harvard was a classy place—1950? 1850? 1750?—dining was a full-service experience. In place of Mather’s giant windows and wainscoting-free serving area, Eliot’s dark wood paneling and Lowell’s chandeliers were the rule. Coats and ties were not only ubiquitous—they were required. In such a world, senseless purchases weren’t about ordering bagged lunches and checking up on nutrition facts; they were about proving how much better and more elegant we were than everyone else. Whither went our intricately carved wooden chairs? Our tables crafted from aged, solid oak covered in soft, silken tablecloths? Our bow-tied and jacketed service staff? The degrading and dishonorable concept of self-service—requesting our own meals on high-tech kiosks, for example—had as large a place in this elegant world of silk and mahogany as women did on the student side of the kitchen door.

Although none of us was actually alive during this golden age of true elegance, we pine for it no less strenuously, and wish HUDS would devote its superfluous expenditures to recreating Harvard’s classic gold coast experience rather than to installing newfangled machines. If we’re to truly honor the second Gilded Age in which we live, HUDS should put away the television monitors and kiosks and break out the gold leafing and bowties.

Or perhaps we could just forget extraneous expenses altogether and keep the dining halls open past 7:15 p.m.?