PU student petition seeks traditional dining hall seating

Administration improvement plan sees doing away with long rows of trestle tables for smaller dining areas

By: Hilary Parker
   Demonstrating their appetite for tradition, over 500 students at Princeton University have signed petitions against proposed changes to the seating arrangements and design of the Madison and Mestres dining halls of the Rockefeller and Mathey residential colleges.
   Princeton University Executive Vice President Mark Burstein said the student concerns are in response to recommendations made in the Jennings Report delivered to President Shirley M. Tilghman on Oct. 10 by the Task Force on Dining and Social Options, meant to improve students’ dining experience. Professor of German Michael Jennings chaired the committee, which included students, faculty and staff.
   Student response to a number of the initiatives — including the establishment of chef-managers in each venue with authority to function independently of other dining halls and efforts to prepare food catered to individual students’ needs — has been overwhelmingly positive, Mr. Burstein said. Student concerns have addressed the proposed changes to the dining spaces themselves, he said, including the tables and chairs as well as the proposed layouts of the halls.
   "I started to hear students’ reactions in the fall to the designs that was different than the students’ reactions a year previously," Mr. Burstein said, explaining that the Jennings committee expressed "a unanimous view that the furniture layout and type in those two halls should be changed" to improve intimacy and facilitate student interaction.
   "Dining spaces that can seat 400 students, with open sight lines, soaring ceilings, and geometrically arranged rows of identical, often trestle tables are impressive, but they are not conducive to the kind of intimate dining experience envisioned here," the report stated. "The architectural firms should be encouraged to explore solutions that allow for smaller dining areas within larger dining halls—that convey the sense of warmth and intimacy stressed in this report."
   In response to this passage, Matthew Halgren, a freshman in Rockefeller, led the effort to preserve the seating status quo in Rockefeller College. He created a display board on the issue — complete with a current photograph of the Rockefeller dining hall and an artist’s rendering of the proposed changes — and encouraged students to sign a petition.
   Between the signatures he collected at the dining hall and those he amassed going door-to-door, Mr. Halgren said he obtained 238 signatures from students in Rockefeller College and 88 from upperclassmen and students in other residential colleges. An article on the protest in The Daily Princetonian student newspaper generated additional interest, he said, and led him to create an online petition for alumni. Currently, nearly 100 alumni have signed.
   "I know that they spent a lot of time thinking about this," Mr. Halgren said of the Jennings committee, noting that he understands the group’s intention to better students’ mealtime experiences. "I think that the long tables really are, if not the best way for students to eat, at least equally good. I think that it’s very difficult to dispute that they are the best arrangement to complement the Gothic architecture."
   Brendan Lyons, a student in Mathey, said the Mathey petition has 270 signatures, the majority from students in Mathey. He said the petition was submitted to Mathey College Master Antoine Kahn, and spoke positively of the future.
   "I’m optimistic that when the dining halls are renovated, the plan will include the long tables distinctive to the Gothic atmosphere of Rocky and Mathey," Mr. Lyons said.
   Changing the tables or dining hall layout is not the only way to improve the feel of the dining spaces, Mr. Burstein said, and he and the administration will take student concerns into account in their future work with Mesher Shing, a Seattle-based architectural firm that will redesign the Madison and Mestres dining facilities. He said the goal now is to determine how to give the dining halls a "less institutional" feel while taking students’ viewpoints into consideration.
   "Now that we have this student feedback, we’re going to reconsider this over the next two months and make some decisions," Mr. Burstein said. "My hope would be that we have some new renderings for when the students return in September."