Illustration by Alicia Toldi.
One of the few simple joys in life is enjoying my dinner as I watch a little television and relax after a long day of classes. Perusing Harris and trying to find something that both looks good and can be carried back to my dorm in a napkin has become a daily ritual of mine. When I started craving pasta, I decided I would splurge and get a pack of paper bowls and some plastic forks. Things were going pretty well for me. That is until one day, when I was making my nightly Harris run. I was greeted with an aggressive little sign that told me I could not take food back to my dorm.
This may not seem like that big of a deal to some. “Just get a friend, and eat with them!” I assume they’d say. But to these people I hypothetically reply that it is a big deal to me. I am a cripplingly antisocial person, and proud of it. The idea of trying to coordinate a time to eat with someone else is more trouble than it’s worth to me. Frankly, I’ve never understood why cramming food in your mouth and making conversation with the aforementioned mouth have become so closely linked.
I tried a couple of times simply sitting by myself on those raised counters near the microwaves and eating, but I felt horrible every time. It was like I could feel everyone’s eyes. “Look at that freak, eating alone,” I imagined them thinking. “We should all get together and spit on him later.” (In my mind, everyone in Harris is a bully from the 1950s… and they’re telepathically linked.) I couldn’t deal with the embarrassment.
I don’t particularly enjoy breaking the rules. In fact, I dislike it so much that I briefly toyed with the idea of subsiding on nothing but fruit, prepackaged ice cream novelties and twenty-four ounce beverages for the remainder of the year, but let’s be honest: that’s not a sustainable diet. Against my better wishes I have returned to my old dining habits, only this time, I’m an outlaw.
Dinner for me has begun to feel like a heist. I quietly slink around the cafeteria as I decide what I want, and once my target is acquired, I snatch it up and nonchalantly head for the door, my heart trembling. My path to the exit is staggered as I stride between different members of the dining staff, hoping nobody catches me and puts me in Harris jail. By the time I’ve gotten back to my room, my Catholic guilt has gotten the better of me and I feel like I’ve done something wrong. Suddenly, my favorite way of relaxing has become just the tiniest bit stressful.
I asked some of my fellow rule breakers for their thoughts on the matter, and many felt they had the right to take food for another reason: they’re paying for it. By virtue of going to this school, most of us (those living in housing with kitchens excluded) are forced to pay for a meal plan. Given the choice between eating in Harris and using the money from our meal plans to eat food of our choosing, my hunch is that the majority of students here would choose the latter. The point is we’re already restricted in what we eat. It makes it that much worse to be restricted in where we eat it as well, particularly when, as college students, much of our lives are spent on-the-go.
If the signs were there to prevent people from stealing plates and cups, then I’d fully understand. However, this is not the case. Word around the rumor mill is that the reason the signs are there is because there is a legal risk in letting students hoard food. If a student were to save dining hall food long enough for it to go bad, they could sue the school.
Let me start by saying that if you’re dumb enough to eat spoiled Harris food: it’s your own fault, and you deserve diarrhea. That said, it’s kind of insulting that the school is willing to assume that we’re all that dumb. Everything at Conn this year feels just a little bit stricter. Sometimes I think that mandatory helmets and kneepads are not that far away. I can’t help but feel as though the school sees us first and foremost as liabilities, as if, on some level, the school sees it as if it’s them versus us.
There’s a certain discord that is created with this way of thinking which doesn’t benefit anyone. The school can cover all its bases, but things will still happen. Everyone knows that old adage: “You prevent more legal action with honey than with vinegar.” In my mind, if Conn doesn’t want to be sued, the best way to avoid it is by being a place that people don’t want to sue. Driving these little wedges between the students and the administration does not help.
I know it’s just a simple pleasure, but it’s the simple pleasures that make life worth living. So to whomever it is that says we cannot take food out of Harris, I say to you: RELAX. •
