We Don’t Want to Eat Alone

A buzzing atmosphere, unexpected conversations, and time to slow down the pace of our busy lives. All of this we had, and all of this we lost for a time. The brief return of grab-and-go dining this semester reminds us how central the dining halls are to Harvard’s culture and community and how much we owe to the people who keep them running.

Returning to our dining halls in the fall semester was exhilarating. The paradoxically intimate coffeehouse culture of these cavernous halls was again ours to enjoy. We lost hours of valuable grind time to unexpected chats with people we hadn’t spoken to in months, allowing ourselves to prize contact over productivity. Like most community-building indulgements, it proved worthwhile; the most spontaneous run-ins often led to the most enlightening and humanizing conversation. We were back, and grateful for it.

Then, in January, Omicron came and dining halls went. It was back to grab-and-go through the first few weeks of the spring, all packaged meals and missed converstations. The transition wasn’t seamless, either. Quad students in particular struggled to find a place to eat because of poor communication and the impractical distance between their dorms and their classes. Students at Currier House and Pforzheimer House, for instance, grabbed but had nowhere to go, after their houses failed to suggest any practical indoor dining. Meanwhile, trash cans across campus overflowed with the sudden influx of grab-and-go waste, raising sustainability and general hygiene concerns.

The rollout, in short, was bumpy. And yet, the most notable mark of the grab-and-go period was interpersonal, not practical. Amidst packed bins and locked dinning halls, we missed the intangible.

Freshmen lost Annenberg, unrivaled across the whole University in its social scale and essential to making a sprawling 1,900 person class feel a tiny bit smaller. Sophomores woke up to the worst possible sort of déjà vu, reminded of their unique on-campus life last year, once again bringing back food to be reheated and deleted in the solitude of their rooms. Even juniors and seniors, with their tighter preexisting bonds, missed the thrill of running into an unexpected face in the dinning hall, or of desperately attempting to avoid doing so. On the heels of a closer-to-normal semester, the sudden return to restrictions felt jarring, a regression towards the non-normalcy we were so eager to leave behind.

That stage is behind us now — for the time being, at least. In-person dining is back, and we couldn’t feel more grateful. Losing it twice should, if anything, remind us of the central role it plays in our lives, of how meaningful every forced smile by the grill and awkward across-the-hall wave is in tying our community together. Not having access to these basic rituals, not being able to break bread with our peers, takes a substantial toll on our wellbeing. Anthropologists place social eating at the heart of community and make clear that it holds immense social value — eating brings us together on a biological level, and we should be grateful for the opportunity to do so together.

That gratitude need not be directed skyward. We can, instead, aim it at the HUDS workers who swipe us in every morning and every evening, who keep our dining halls running and embody the best of Harvard, who do their best to provide appetizing meals to hordes of underslept, overworked young adults. Their commitment to this community— working through a pandemic, a blizzard, a supply chain crisis — is one that deserves praise and gratitude, not only in the midst of crisis but long afterward.

Even for those of us who prefer the efficient convenience of grab-and-go dining, simply walking past a full dining hall, loudly and emphatically occupied, is a reminder of our collective humanity. A reminder that, eventually, we must eat, we must slow down, and we can come together when we do. That we don’t have to eat alone in our rooms while juggling an assignment and a Zoom meeting, and that we might not want to.

These are the important parts of life too often forgotten at Harvard. We hope that time will not dull our newfound appreciation.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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