Food Financing

"The only thing wrong with the food at Harvard that there are a few unfortunates who have to eat it," Franklin Roosevelt told a potential undergraduate in 1920. This complaint, made long before the House system had given the dining halls their present taint, unfortunately still holds today. Not even Adams House is recommended by Duncan Hines.

Through the years local gourmets have made a variety of suggestions for relieving chronic indigestion and starvation, ranging from abolition to Hayes-Bickford. This year a low ebb in gastronomic satisfaction precipitated another investigation, by well-meaning, if hungry Student Council Members.

Their long-awaited report is a disappointment to those who expected a sweeping program for reform. Most of their recommendations are useless or undesirable. Out of the entire report, only one point deserves serious consideration by the Administration. The others, from demands for better chefs to those for better meat, merit only refutation. It seems extremely unlikely that more qualified cooks could substantially improve the quality of nay meal which must be served to 4000 men over a two-hour period. The suggestion that the $10,000 surplus in dining hall funds be spent on better cuts of beef is well-intentioned, as is the report itself, but would give each undergraduate only one steak dinner a year, hardly a monumental change.

It seems that by definition it is impossible to serve a low-cost meal to 4000 students which will satisfy them all. The only significant suggestion to come out of the Council's deliberations is the idea that perhaps some of the dissatisfaction could be removed if students were not required to pay for meals they cannot bring themselves to eat.

The Dining Hall Department has long maintained that this would result in a prohibitive increase in weekly rates, but under the Council plan this is patently untrue. At present, undergraduates pay $14.50 for a hypothetical 16 meals a week, and thus subsidize those who eat 21. If the report's suggestion were enacted, the hearty eaters could contract for the full allotment of meals at the beginning of each term, and the dissipates could have their board expenses equitably reduced. Since this would entail no more bookkeeping trouble than separating the student body into 14-meal and 21-meal categories, and would still give the kitchens an idea of the daily food requirements, any increase in accounting expenses would seem to be offset by the more just distribution of the board costs.

The most valid objections to the signing off proposal come from the Housemasters, who feel that such a plan would hurt the house system. One of the basic premises of the existing system is that by collecting undergraduates to eat, a valuable mental collision is generated, which is lost by those who eat in clubs or local restaurants. Undeniably this is a potent argument against the change as it applies to lunch and dinner, not to breakfast. Certainly most students who miss the morning meal do so in order to stay in bed rather than to find better company or menus. If the Council's report at least leads to adoption of voluntary breakfasts, it will prove worth the trouble of the Council and it's committee.