Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex Needs a Dining Hall

Picture this: It’s a frigid January morning, and you’re trudging through snow and ice, crossing the Charles River, and navigating Harvard Business School’s labyrinthine campus. Your destination? The Science and Engineering Complex, where you’ll attend class for which you just stayed up until 3 a.m. completing a problem set.

After this arduous journey, you’re probably starving. But sadly, you’re left without options.

Despite the fact that it hosts a large and increasing share of engineering and computer science courses, the SEC does not have a dining hall. In 2022, more than 1,300 students declared a primary or joint concentration in engineering, computer science, or applied mathematics. That means as many as a fifth of the students at Harvard visit the SEC regularly, often during lunch — and that number doesn’t even include freshmen and non-concentrators.

During mealtimes, all of these students must rely on two inadequate alternatives: the SEC Cafe and Flyby, Harvard’s grab-and-go meal service. These options fall short in several ways.

Flyby provides only pre-packaged sandwiches, salads, soups, and snacks, which usually means only one or two choices for students who have dietary restrictions. These items are less fresh and create significantly more plastic waste than the hot food in dining halls, which is served with reusable dishware and cutlery. And the SEC Cafe isn’t a costless option — students only have $65 per semester of BoardPlus, the equivalent of about five or six meals.

The alternative — returning to the river for lunch — is also impractical. It could take 30 minutes or more round trip each day. Students at the SEC need more robust meal options.

Harvard should open a fully-fledged dining hall in the SEC. Though it would be a significant undertaking, it seems feasible. Harvard was able to integrate a dining hall into The Inn, which has served as overflow housing for those displaced by renovations to Adams and Dunster House. Because many graduate students also eat at the SEC, the new dining hall could include meal purchase options or a section of “upgraded” meals that would resemble those currently in the SEC Cafe in order to ensure adequate demand.

A dining hall would not only feed the hundreds of students who use the SEC around lunch every day, but it would also create a sense of community and camaraderie around a building that’s often seen as an outcast of the Harvard campus, located over a mile away from Harvard Yard.

Short of a full-service dining hall, Harvard can still do more to improve the SEC’s food options. Part of the SEC Cafe could be sectioned off for undergraduate dining, providing a smaller version of the menu that is in Annenberg and the Houses. Harvard could also increase the amount of BoardPlus for students taking SEC classes around lunchtime or provide meal swipes into the SEC Cafe at certain times. More broadly, expanded access to Harvard’s cafes could encourage students to take classes that they may not otherwise, without concern about where they will eat.

Considering that most students pay for a full meal plan, and that proper nutrition is essential to students’ health, Harvard should regard a fresh meal as a basic necessity for students. Hundreds of students should not regularly be forced to scarf down a cold sandwich between classes.

Until then, good luck to all of the students making that frigid trek this winter — or taking their chances on the SEC Express shuttle. Hopefully they had time to grab a meal beforehand.

Mukta R. Dharmapurikar ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Environmental Science and Engineering and Economics in Lowell House.