Food as Elitism at Trinity: A Freshman’s Dining Perspective

Leon Hu ‘29

Contributing Writer

Homesickness, living independently, higher workload, roommate issues—the list of college culture shocks is nearly infinite. However, as one of the 482 freshmen joining campus this fall, my biggest shock was none of the above: it was food. 

To put it lightly, Trinity does not have a good reputation regarding its food. With a total of only three on-campus dining options and just a single traditional dining hall (although adequate for our student body), complaints about Mather, our only dining hall, translate into complaints about all food at Trinity. In fact, its reputation was so bad that when curating my final college list, food was a con, listed alongside factors like academic reputation, location and campus life, due to a barrage of anecdotes about how horrid the food at Mather was. 

Consequently, you can imagine my surprise when during orientation weekend, I was presented with not only a surprisingly diverse array of culinary options, but also with two consecutive weeks of food that I found to be delicious. I have enjoyed every meal that I have eaten at Trinity thus far.  It goes against everything I had heard previously. In my humble opinion, the food is good. And I’m not alone in holding this opinion: one of the first conversations I had with an upperclassman was about how Mather’s food subverted student expectations. To an extent, we’ve subverted the stereotypes of online college discourse. 

Still, some of the stereotypes hold up: Trinity is a school designed by and intended for the rich.  26.2% of Trinity students come from the top 1% of families, dwarfing even that of Harvard’s same proportion of 15%. This proportion is higher than that of students from the bottom 60% of families – meaning that we have more students from the top 1% of families than the bottom 60%. 

This is quite a staggering statistic, and at face value, it does suggest that Trinity is populated by mostly richer students. However, socioeconomic status aside, most of my peers have been nothing short of amazing; I’m surrounded by great people no matter where I find myself on campus.  But the stereotypical entitlement still exists, just like at all private institutions, and the more I’m immersed in Trinity life, the more it seems to concentrate around food.

I’ll put it plainly: a lot of us, me included, have been spoiled with food. Coming from an affluent family myself, I get it; Trinity’s dining can’t compare to eating out at restaurants multiple times a week, and no dining can compare to the love put into a home-cooked meal. But we’re not eating at restaurants here:  Mather is a college dining hall. For having unlimited swipes per day at a buffet-style hall, the food is really good. There is a clear difference between what you should expect from a high-end restaurant and what you should expect from meal plan food at a small college. For what we get, we’re very well off.

The food isn’t the main issue, however. It’s how some of us treat our dining staff. Most of the people I’ve observed have been quite nice: they thank the servers whenever they can, they don’t rush them and they respect their hours. Yet, I’ve noticed many cases where people show little respect for the people graciously serving us food. In these cases, we need to do better.

Our food staff, just like the rest of Trinity’s wide range of faculty and staff, deserves our respect. These are the people that serve us at 7:30 in the morning—even earlier for them—until eight at night. They prepare every meal we eat, grill our sandwiches for us, serve us rice bowls, give us that extra little bit of sauce we ask for and serve us plate after plate of food, all for far lower pay and respect from our student body than deserved.  Yet, regardless of what we may think of their food, they don’t complain—so why should we?

Ultimately, our treatment of food service workers encapsulates a larger issue of elitism present in every walk of life on campus. We, a primarily affluent student body, need to realize that all of the people who work at our school are doing this for us. They seem like ordinary sights, but Trinity’s workers are people.  Just like all people, they deserve the same respect and love that we deserve. We are not a higher and more important class of people. We’re human, we’re equals; and we should really show more respect to the workers who make our dining possible. 

At the end of the day, we can all afford to show a bit more gratitude to the workers of Trinity.  Yes, complaining about the food is valid—no one should take away your right to opinion; but failing to respect the people that make our lives as students possible is unacceptable. Trinity’s workers work for us, but sometimes, we also need to work for them.