Adams Dining Hall Temporarily Closes Due to Fruit Fly Infestation

The Adams House dining hall is closed temporarily due to an infestation of fruit flies, the Adams House faculty deans announced Friday.

Faculty Deans Mercedes C. Becerra ’91 and Salmaan Keshavjee wrote in an email to Adams House residents that the closure is necessary to combat a fruit fly invasion, which has caused distress among students who have found small flies in their food since the issue began two weeks ago.

“While we have been able to make strides in addressing the problem over the course of the last few days, additional work is needed to address and resolve the root cause of this problem,” they wrote.

“We hope that this closure will last only for a short period of time, and we plan to provide a further update early next week,” they added.

As the dining hall remains shuttered, Becerra and Keshavjee wrote that Adams House residents are permitted to eat all meals, without timing restrictions, at any other undergraduate house. They asked students to visit different houses to avoid overcrowding in dining halls near Adams House.

In an email to Adams residents on Wednesday, Becerra and Keshavjee wrote that House staff and Harvard University Dining Services had been cleaning the dining hall since last week and attributed the scourge of fruit flies to shipments of fruit not treated with pesticides.

“Unfortunately, we are all sharing an experience that is, at a minimum, unappetizing (a.k.a. gross) and annoying. There has been a lot going on behind the scenes to fix this situation post haste,” they wrote. “We are also trying to understand what went wrong so that we can prevent anything like this in the future.”

Becerra and Keshavjee wrote on Friday that they hope the closure will be short-lived.

“The Dining Hall is a very special space for all of us, and it is frustrating indeed to have to have this temporary closure, but this is what is required to solve this problem,” they wrote.

—Staff writer Yuen Ting Chow can be reached at yuenting.chow@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Alex Koller can be reached at alex.koller@thecrimson.com.