Harvard Affiliates Flock to Annenberg for HUDS Thanksgiving Feast

Even as Harvard Yard has grown eerily quiet as campus emptied for Thanksgiving break, hundreds of people gathered in Annenberg Hall on Thursday night for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Harvard University Dining Services prepared rows of pies, a carefully decorated bread and cheese board, and a carved roast turkey. Dining hall hours were extended for the holiday as the meal was served continuously from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Sabrina H. Zhu ’27, who is from California, praised the meal cooked by HUDS.

“I think it’s really nice,” Zhu said. “All the staff is really friendly. There's a really big selection.”

For students who don’t typically celebrate Thanksgiving, the dinner at Annenberg was a novel experience.

“It's not part of my culture, but I guess it’s cool to experience it,” said Herman Xin Yang Leong ’26, an international student from Malaysia.

The Thanksgiving meal was also open to graduate students, who are normally prohibited from eating in Annenberg, which is usually reserved for freshmen. For some of those students, the dinner provided them with a unique opportunity to eat alongside students from other parts of the University.

“Feels like I’m an undergrad again, being in the undergrad hall,” said Harvard Law School student Benjamin A. Sutter.

Mahi Lal, a Harvard Kennedy School student from India, said she thought it was “great that this hall has opened up for the community this time, because usually graduate students aren’t allowed here.”

“The food is really good,” Lal added.

Students cited a variety of reasons for their decision to stay at the school rather than venturing home, but the most common reason by far was travel costs.

“Mostly for money reasons,” said Juan Valdez ’26, who lives in California. “It could get expensive to pay a plane ride back to my hometown, so it’s a little easier to just save that money and use it for longer holidays.”

Although students mostly spoke positively about the Annenberg Thanksgiving dinner, Kylie L. Hunts-in-Winter ’25, who is Native American, said that the school’s choice to only offer Thanksgiving food was “a little bit odd” considering that many of the students who remained on campus don’t celebrate the holiday.

“I’m Native American, so growing up we were actually kind of anti-Thanksgiving,” Hunts-in-Winter said.

“It just doesn’t exactly feel right to just be eating Thanksgiving food because I don't want to be celebrating Thanksgiving, but I’m not really given a choice because it's the only food I can eat,” she added.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.