New Quad Dining Policy Discriminates

It's bad enough to have to live at 29 Garden Street. And now, as the Cambridge winter's grasp tightens around the neck of the class of 1997, the unlucky residents of Harvard's hotel cum dorm have to endure the additional insult of being hungry as well as cold.

The Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) has decided to randomly assign each of the first-years living at 29G to one of the Quad houses for meals. Without regard for friendships, dietary needs, or cereal preference, Harvard has unfairly curtailed the dining options of those who were on the business end of the first-year housing lottery.

On the surface, the goals of the action seem laudable. The FDO is ostensibly trying to build solidarity in the class of 1997 by making the Union more attractive to the locationally challenged. They are also trying to preserve the quality of life in the Quad houses by reducing the influx of first-years; there is nothing worse than seeing the last Chickwich taken by a cherub-faced kid talking about how excited he is to take his first college exam.

But why start restrictions now, when residents of 29 Garden St. have been eating anywhere in the Quad all year? According to Currier dining hall officials, the real answer seems to lie with Currier House Master William Graham's distaste for the serfs of the Harvard community dining en masse in his fiefdom.

As one senior dining hall employee at Currier explained, "One night [Graham] came in here and there were a bunch of freshman in the dining hall and he got kind of pissed. I don't know who he called, but two weeks later we had a list for 29 Garden Street."

Graham was out of the country and could not be reached for comment this week.

But the policy simply isn't fair. While Harvard places interhouse restrictions on a number of other dining halls, they apply to all non-residents of the house in question, not just those who got thrown head-first into the shallow end of the freshman housing pool. Consider the fact that a first-year from Weld could eat at all of the three Quad houses with all of her friends, while a 29G resident has to eat at a randomly assigned house with randomly assigned people. And they say lightning never strikes twice.

If the residents and housemasters of the Quad feel so strongly on the issue of first-year meal guests, they should implement normal interhouse restrictions, not just single out those residents of 29 Garden St.

The social lives of those students assigned to 29 Garden St. are bound to become anemic as the snowdrifts rise and temperatures fall. Their bodies shouldn't have to follow because of an unfair policy created by a single housemaster.