We Are What We Eat

The last time Nadine Brozan dined at Dewick, women were not allowed to wear pants inside — that is, unless it was snowing. So, she and her friends carried skirts to cover their legs.

“This was the era of Bermuda shorts,” she recalled. “We each had what we called a ‘dinner skirt.’ It was a skirt that was big enough to fit over the Bermuda shorts.”

While the core function of the dining center — to fill bellies — is unchanged, little else remains the same since Brozan was an undergraduate in the late 1950s. If dining halls are reflective of our time, then the fare (and certainly the dress code) is much more progressive. Vibrant green smoothies appear in students’ hands across campus; Fresh at Carmichael is entirely gluten- and nut-free; and dozens of cuisines are available on any given day. A lot of these changes are due in no small part to Patti Klos, Tufts’ senior director of dining services. Since arriving at Tufts 35 years ago, Klos has ushered in a more personalized era of college food.

“There’d be three entrees and some sides that went with it. … In the ’70s, ’80s, maybe that was enough; by the time we got into the ’90s and beyond, that really wasn’t enough variety at a meal,” she recalled.

One of Klos’ goals is to “deinstitutionalize” dining. That means scrapping single-file lines in favor of open, marketplace-style buffets. Salad bars have been supplemented with make-your-own-pancake machines. Hot dogs and fries are served regularly, but so are quinoa salads and chia pudding.

As more items have been introduced, certain dishes have attained cult status over the years. Students flock to Hodgdon for sticky-sweet pieces of General Gao’s chicken, and dining centers go all out with holiday-themed menus. If you want to score dumplings at Dewick on Lunar New Year, you better be prepared to wait upwards of 30 minutes.

There’s more food, in more varieties, in more places than ever before — but that’s also true beyond the Medford bubble. The dining hall might have had fewer items in the ’80s, but there were also fewer food options everywhere. Alumni recall a time when eating out was for special occasions only, and more people viewed cooking as a chore rather than a leisurely activity.

“A lot of us came from backgrounds where our moms cooked, we didn’t cook,” Laurie Jakobsen (LA’92) said. “If you wanted decent food, you had to come to the dining hall.”

I spoke to Jakobsen, Brozan and other alumni while they were on campus for a reunion. Perhaps it was the novelty of cuisine that would have been so alien to their college-aged selves or the thrill of being back on campus after decades, but the alumni raved about the food.

“When I was in school, tofu was a new thing for Americans,” Michael Goldberg (LA’85) remarked. Now, it’s on the menu every day.

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If a student complains about Tufts Dining on social media, Klos is probably aware of it. She’s even on Sidechat, though her interactions on the anonymous online forum are limited. “I just read. I scroll. I rarely post anything,” she said. “It’s just a way of staying informed.”

People’s gripes about dining vary; sometimes, students complain about the quality of food. One student went viral in 2021 after posting a TikTok of the “scallion pancakes” at Carm, which looked more like buttermilk flapjacks than the traditional, flaky pancakes. Another time, Dewick ran out of food, leading students to flock to Sidechat and post about it. Klos immediately worked to address the food shortages.

“We looked into that and took action right away,” she said. “That feedback hurts because we’re not living up to what we’re supposed to be providing you.”

Klos is Hawaiian and was raised in Indiana. Food was an integral part of her upbringing, and when she arrived at Tufts, she found that her vision aligned with what the school was looking for.

“I’m quirky. Tufts is a little quirky. I felt like I could fit in here and do some good,” she said. Now, decades later, Klos has overseen scores of renovations and menu overhauls. Keeping an ear to the ground is an essential part of Klos’ job, and social media happens to be the top venue for voicing complaints nowadays. She created the first Tufts Dining Facebook page in the social network’s nascent stages, in part to monitor students’ posts about meal swipes. She regularly meets with students and Tufts Community Union senators, sometimes to hear feedback about the food itself and other times to better understand how she can expand the accessibility of dining.

In response to COVID-19, Tufts briefly allowed students to redeem meal swipes at Commons and use two swipes per meal period at retail locations; but those policies were recently reversed, to students’ frustration. Klos says the hardest part of the job is when she has to say “no,” but this was an instance where her hands were tied.

“It wasn’t tenable. It was a response to COVID,” Klos said of the shift. Nevertheless, it prompted petitions, opinion pieces and TCU senate resolutions. Klos saw that feedback and worked with TCU senators on a compromise. Now, students have a fourth “munch” period between lunch and dinner, giving those with meal plans more opportunities to use up their swipes. 

This isn’t the first time student advocacy has resulted in concrete policy changes. In 1994, after students requested round tables at Dewick, they were installed. Dewick has also extended dining hours this semester after TCU senate advocacy.

The most recent example of student-driven change is the return of the on-campus pub, in the form of a pop-up at Hotung. The initiative, spearheaded by TCU senators, Tufts Dining, and University President Sunil Kumar, is designed to create a new social space for students as of November.

“It’s important for our students to have fun in environments that are safe and inclusive,” Kumar told me. 

As it turns out, on-campus bar nights used to be fixtures of campus. The MacPhie Pub opened in April 1977, when the drinking age was still 18. Alcohol was served nightly in the same spot students now eat at Dewick.

But the tradition of on-campus, university-sanctioned drinking has waned over time. Pub nights became less frequent and were moved to a bar downtown. Owing to students’ unruly behavior, university pub nights ended in 2016. In its stead, seniors have flocked to student-organized bar nights at off-campus venues. The cover charges alone can top $30, plus steep drink prices and late-night Uber fares.

I attended a test run of the Pop-up Pub in October. While the vibe was decidedly different from off-campus bars — no sticky floors or visibly intoxicated students here — I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see alcohol served where I usually order coffee. The tables laden with finger food and mood lighting reminded me of a bar mitzvah, in a good way. As I sipped on a blueberry mojito mocktail — I planned to be sober for my seminar later that night — I had no trouble envisioning myself attending future pub nights.

With Pop-up Pub events lasting from 5–9:30 p.m., it’s unlikely they will replace seniors’ nightlife. But the resurrection of an on-campus bar is recognition of students’ desire for more social events.

“What we hear from students in the community is they want a place to socialize that feels more adult, and a place where they can have alcoholic beverages,” Klos said. “We see our students studying all the time, everywhere, and we hope that this is a place to relax a little bit.”

It remains to be seen whether complimentary snacks and modestly priced drinks can convince students to pay a $10 entrance fee. But Kumar, for his part, plans to be a frequent guest. “At [the University of] Chicago, I was dean at that time, but I used to go from time to time to the pub. So if it’s half decent, I’ll show up,” he joked.

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When you factor in the sheer amount of hungry students, some trade-offs are necessary. Tufts is neither a small college nor a large state school; that means the food straddles a line between homey and industrial. Food is still prepared in large batches and served off of hotel pans; but now, the recipes span a wider range of cuisines and utilize more local ingredients.

“If I want to make sure that I’ve got asparagus for 400 people, I may not be able to buy it all within Massachusetts,” Klos said. She tries to take a less “institutional” approach, opting for multiple sources and responsible procurement practices. 

One of Tufts’ food suppliers is the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, an initiative of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy which supports new farmers locally. According to Sara Poggi Davis, New Entry’s food hub program manager, Tufts Dining currently purchases around $800 of seasonal local produce each week through New Entry.

On one of the recent occasions I visited Dewick for this article, I learned that the apples were sourced from New Entry. If I had not asked a dining worker where the apples had come from, I never would have known it was organic and locally harvested. But there’s more intentionality and human effort behind choices at Tufts Dining than we might realize. Even the location of certain food items has a justification.

“I know the gym is not too far [from Kindlevan Café], so we get a lot of athletes, so they’ll come in and grab smoothies,” Neesie Antoine, a retail manager with Tufts Dining, said. “We have a smoothie machine at Hodgdon because I noticed that some people are like, ‘Yeah, Kindlevan’s too far. My classes are this way.’”

Antoine touched on something I picked up on from most of my interactions with students: People generally cite convenience as the reason for their preferred dining location. Sophomore Jessica Zeng mostly frequents Carm because she lives uphill. First-year KK Chen walks past Dewick on her way to class, so she usually stops to eat there. Even her seating choice — the tables near the soft serve machines — is made out of expediency: “It takes less time to walk to get food,” she said.

When we choose to eat at a traditional dining hall like Dewick or Carm, we generally anticipate that we’ll linger there. Running into a friend (or, let’s face it, an enemy) is practically inevitable. Anticipating run-ins, sophomore Mikey Glueck sits in a different part of Dewick based on his mood.

“It depends if I want to be seen, you know? If I’m trying to lock in, I’m going to a corner. If I’m feeling good about myself today, I’ll sit in the middle,” he said.

Sophomore Jackelyn Palomo was sitting alone in the back corner of Dewick when I spoke with her. She had come from an early morning chemistry lecture and was doing homework over breakfast. When I asked her why she chose to sit in that spot, she told me, “It’s pretty calm. Usually there’s not a lot of people here.”

Sophomore Annika Rose Terwilliger sat near the edge of the dining room for the same reason. “I am just eating alone today, and so I wanted to sit at the end, be a little bit out of the way of everybody else, in a quieter space,” she said. Usually, Terwilliger gets lunch at a retail location, even when she’s with a group. “I’d rather sit in my room or outside somewhere than [have] to stay in here.”

Sunday brunch remains an occasion to luxuriate at Dewick. Jakobsen recalls brunch as a “big social event,” eating with her friends for three hours straight. The location opens late, at 11 a.m., and the cuisine matches the celebratory spirit: Strawberries are rolled out in grand bowls alongside quiches and lunch food. It feels celebratory.

“If you want to go to Carm or Dewick, you’re doing it because of the variety. You’re willing to take the 30 minutes to an hour, depending on which meal period, and you may or may not be willing to be social,” Klos said.

Though a renovation of Dewick is not currently slated, Klos envisions having more seating options (think: “soft” seating options, spaces curated for neurodivergent people) as well as a fully meat and dairy-Kosher platform. Right now, though, the priority is brainstorming dining options for the student dormitory set to be constructed on Boston Avenue.

“We have to figure out what dining options we provide upperclassmen on campus because there will be more of them — 700 more of them,” Kumar said. “Whether the Dewick experience is sufficient or we have to do something else, like grab-and-go, or something deeper, I think will be important for us to think through.”

Klos’ ideas for the new space range from a ghost kitchen to a mini supermarket combined with ready-made options. “The constant through all the renovations is the question of, ‘Is the current service model really meeting the needs of the community, and how can we imagine or anticipate how those tastes might change?’” she said.

Some of the changes to Tufts Dining resemble shifts in American dining-out culture. As more people flock to fast-casual spots like Sweetgreen and Cava, Tufts has doubled down on retail dining with recent renovations of Hodgdon and Kindlevan. “Pop-up” events with special menu items resemble trendy limited-run restaurants.

For upperclassmen, most of whom live off campus and do not have unlimited meal plans, the dining center is no longer the convenient source of sustenance it used to be. Only now, as a senior experiencing the harsh responsibilities of adulthood, do I realize how I took the dining centers for granted. At Dewick or Carm, a swipe is a swipe; a cone of soft serve costs the same as a slice of pizza. In the “real world,” there is no place (except maybe an all-you-can-eat buffet) where you can go without making a reservation, eat without having to speak with a single person and leave without worrying about the bill.

But the dining halls serve as more than a feeding ground or a gathering place; they also reflect our culture and our values. Our choices — what to eat, where to sit, our interactions with staff — reflect our upbringings. Maybe part of the reason students crave more options is because we come from more backgrounds.

Klos has worked to make the dining experience fulfill students’ desires. Long, narrow “community tables” have been reintroduced to Dewick so that people can sit by themselves or in groups. While the round tables sound ideal in theory, the reality is that some people just want to do their homework alone in a place that isn’t the library.

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One morning, I toured the labyrinthine kitchen of Dewick with Klos to get a better sense of how food makes it to our tables. The sheer scale of the operation reminded me of a factory, but calling it such would ignore the massive human effort that goes into meal preparation. As one cook stirred a vat of vegetable jambalaya, I snuck a look at her recipe sheet; except for the massive quantities the recipe called for (15 pounds each of potatoes, tomatoes and beans), it looked like something I would cook at home.

At the end of the tour, Klos and I sat in the dining room and chatted. She told me that more people have requested to tour the kitchen recently, and alumni will come to dining centers in search of specific staff members. To this day, Klos recalls connecting with students as a sophomore flipping eggs at Purdue University, eventually learning which students liked theirs cooked over-easy or well-done. These indelible experiences have always been a part of the dining experience because food is always personal.

Before we parted ways in Dewick, Klos told me to help myself to a plate of food. As I walked into the serving area, I felt newly overwhelmed. There were so many choices, and I only had one free meal. Our access to dining halls is limited to our time at college. So go ahead, get that second plate of fries. Have a cone of ice cream for breakfast and a bowl of cereal for dinner. Just don’t take it for granted, because in a few decades, it’s possible that none of it will be the same.