Maggie D’Aprix ’17 hates cherry vanilla ice cream. “Seeing the light pink tub and feeling pure joy, and then seeing the ‘cherry vanilla’ written on the little board, is one of the most soul crushing experiences,” she tells me. Not one to suffer idly, Maggie sought recourse by writing an impassioned Napkin Note, appealing to the Harris staff: “Cherry Vanilla ruins my day, please make it stop.” Mike Kmec’s response illustrates the power Napkin Notes can have, as he wrote back: “Due to the overwhelming amount of Napkin Notes on this subject alone, we will reduce the amount of Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream ordered. It is one of my favorites but I will bow down to the pressure.” This is but one example of a successful Napkin Note interaction.
Phoebe Papademetriou, nostalgic for the cuisine of Soup & Breads past, helped craft a note requesting that the beloved and famed bleu cheese dip of 2012 be reinstated to its place of honor by the silverware. This note was penned on a Tuesday, and by the following Thursday, there was the dip, in all its glory. “I remember coming into Freeman sopping wet from an arctic rainstorm and seeing the long lost dish. I was filled with such joy. Seeing that dip brought back great memories,” she recounted. Again a day was made by the answering of a Napkin Note.
However, I have also heard stories of frustration with the Napkin Note system, recently embodied in a recent Voice article that centered on the thesis that “our requests rarely change anything.”
Although I personally disagree with this statement, it would be difficult to prove empirically.
But something important to consider when assessing efficacy of Napkin Notes is their scope. Although I don’t think Napkin Notes would be a particularly effective way to foment a culinary revolution, I do think they provide an important tool.
It is my understanding that Napkin Notes are an accessible means for students to communicate to Dining Services their likes, dislikes and suggestions. And if a request is not fulfilled, I do not believe this means “no one is listening to us,” but rather may signify that the request was not feasible. Dining Services has limitations of both budget and physical space that it must work within. I’ve known Mike Kmec for almost 3 years and do believe that he solves each problem as best as is possible with the resources available.
To answer the probably rhetorical question, “are we wasting our napkins on notes,” I’d say it depends. If you are asking for lobster and nutella, as one Napkin Note did, I’d say yes, that is a waste of a note. But if you are asking for something that is within the realm of possibility, then no. Though even if a seemingly reasonable note goes unfulfilled, please rest assured that there is no conspiracy theory and understand that Dining Services works hard to reconcile epicurean tastes and the need to put food on the table for 2,000 hungry students.
Beyond a discussion of the efficacy of Napkin Notes, what I would like to unpack most is the invocation of the “steep tuition of about $50,000” argument in regards to the desire for two different types of granola in JA. The comprehensive fee for Connecticut College 2013-2014 year is $58,780. That is a significant amount of money and I do believe that it is important to think critically about the cost of our education and what we are getting out of it. However, I think the tuition argument is a tricky one and one that ought to be used judiciously.
By using tuition cost as reasoning for why something should be provided to us, it implies that we have paid for said thing, that we are entitled to it. And that is a difficult argument. Especially for granola. One might argue that it is not ludicrous to expect a granola aficionado to walk the eight minutes from JA to Harris. But that aside, it raises some complicated questions. Is two different types of granola really something we should expect to be given based upon high cost of tuition, or rather, what does our cost of attendance guarantee us? When is the use of this argument appropriate, if at all?
The cost of attendance, or comprehensive fee, at Connecticut College includes, but is not limited to, the cost of tuition, room and board. These are very broad terms that encompass the classes we attend, the dorms we live in, the food we eat. As different individuals have their own interpretation of the specificities of what this cost ought to grant us, the tuition (or rather cost of attendance) argument is highly subjective and thus potentially problematic as a stance for reform.
It is not my intent to suggest that we should have low expectations as to what opportunities are offered to us. Nor do I have any interest in quelling those interested in affecting positive change on campus. I only mean to posit that the connotations surrounding the financial argument make it a complicated one, and one that individuals should contemplate before using. I don’t think there is any one right answer to the questions I’ve raised, but I do think they are important to ask oneself, to determine what they mean to you. •
