Tough Housing Choices: The Saybrook rats are scrambling to find off-campus apartments for 2020 after yesterday’s big dining hall announcement.
A Sense of Student Power: The renovations come in response to a survey conducted last year, in which students voted that Saybrook’s food could be better and that removing beans from most pastas would be great. And boy, did Yale Facilities deliver! Thanks to student input, in the next 15 months, the dining halls will be 100% bean-free… and pasta-free… and furniture and wall and floor-free too!
More Flexible Dining Plans: As compensation for the inconvenience, all Saybrook students will receive 500 MarvyBucks to spend at the Commons Bistro, which are redeemable for up to 40 Awake Chocolates and a copy of What it Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence by Stephen A. Schwarzman.
Reduced Noise Pollution: Dean Marvin Chun claimed that Saybrugians can focus and relax more between the hours of 5:30 and 6:30, since “they won’t be able to hear the Harkness Bells as much over the fortissimo jackhammering of their dining hall.”
Saybrook’s Sense of Community: Saybrook students are devastated by the loss of their dining hall and the sense of family it fosters. One reported, “The Saybrook Dining Hall is the heart and soul of Saybrook. It’s where I had my first meal, made my first friend, lost my first virginity, and where I study at night.” To maintain the sense of community in Saybrook for the Class of 2024, more social events will be put in place, such as a Holiday Snack in addition to the annual Holiday Dinner.
Branford’s Sense of Community: About the same, but they’ll have to eat in JE.
—S. Force
