The Right to Soup

On November 13, I approached the Parker Room with my stomach growling for soup, only to be turned away at the door. I wasn’t alone. Students at regular sitdown tables were forbidden from entering the Parker Room at all.

Mr. Kelly addressed the rationale for this ban with both an announcement and an email. The latter stated that “there is a limited amount of food allocated for staff and families in the Parker Room. Having the kitchen staff scramble to make-up for the volume of food consumed by students is becoming overwhelming.” I understand this concern when it comes to food in the Parker Room that is also served at the sit-down meal. However, this argument does not hold up when considering two specific categories of food: soup and leftovers. The Deerfield Dining Hall should either restore student access to soup and leftovers, or better yet, move a soup and leftover station to the main Dining Hall.

Students taking soup and leftover food would not cause the kitchen staff to “scramble to make-up for the volume of food consumed by students.” During regular sit-down lunches before students were denied entry, the Parker Room rarely experienced a lack of soup. The kitchen was already preparing enough soup for the number of people who wanted it—including students who came in briefly before their sit-downs. After the Dining Hall started enforcing these stricter sit-down rules on November 13, I took a look at the soup station after lunch had been over. Two full containers of hot soup were still sitting there, untouched. As for leftover food, it would also be beneficial for students to consume them rather than leave them to waste. The Parker Room is not reliant on these leftovers to feed the staff and families that eat in it. If the concern is that staff and families might not get food, the solution should directly address the problem; the Dining Hall should prevent students from taking food that is also being served at their sit-down tables and allow them access to leftovers and soup.

Right now, students assigned to the Parker Room have access to more food options compared to those at regular sit-down tables. The assignment process is random, which creates a sense of unfairness. No one should feel disappointed when they’re assigned to a sit-down table instead of the Parker Room. That runs against Deerfield’s emphasis on community as a signature part of our culture.

Sit-down meals are meant to be more than food; they are about face-to-face conversations that build a strong community. But that's hard to prioritize when some people at the table are still hungry. I have experienced sitdown tables that were filled with hearty eaters who wished they had eaten more by the end of the meal, even though they were eating the entire time. Since your mouth can only do one thing at a time, it is not really possible to engage in meaningful conversation when you are hungry. At the same time, students are already heavily constrained in terms of what types of food are available to them. The salad and deli bars help, especially for students with dietary restrictions, but eating the same limited options day after day gets repetitive Allowing students to grab a quick bowl of warm soup or leftovers prior to a sit-down meal allows them to quench some of their hunger.

So what should Deerfield do? One option would be to go back to the previous system but prevent students from consuming food that would be served at their sit-down meals. Tbis allows them to still take leftovers and soup. While this is better than what we have now, it would be diffcult to enforce and also create unnecessary traffic in the Parker Room.

There is even a better, cleaner solution: open a soup bar and leftover station in the main Dining Hall, accessible to all students. This would reduce food waste, avoid crowding the Parker Room with extra student traffic and dishes, and make access to soup and extra options more equawl across the student body. We already do something similar during walkthrough lunches. Extending that system wouldn’t require reinventing the wheel. At the very least, we should be planning for a permanent solution in the new Brick Dining Hall: a soup station open to all Deerfield students.