Lonely Lunches: Pros & Cons
By SAM ALTMAN ‘26
While the new dining hall remains under construction, the Academy has been forced to make some tough decisions. Not only do students have a temporary tent outside Elm Street dining hall, but the new schedule includes unfamiliar staggered lunch blocks that, as some see it, have added another layer of complexity to already busy lives.
There are several drawbacks to the new scheduling system. Firstly, and most obviously, many students may feel as though their social lives are being harmed because they’re not able to have lunch with their classmates. If you happen to have Dl block instead of D2 block on Mondays or the B1 block instead of the B2 block on Thursdays, it’s possible that you may not be able to have lunch with your closest friends or even someone you know for the entire term. Especially for younger students, it’s not hard to imagine how this could cause problems of loneliness at dining times.
Secondly, the staggered blocks make planning lunch events very difficult. On a practical level, events like meetings with (club) advisors, teachers, and general student-student meetings that happen over lunch are severely hindered. If even one person in a class project has the wrong block, you would have to find another time entirely. However, this issue extends to a scale that affects the school en masse. For example, many students are not able to attend certain Elting Room talks with assembly speakers because they have a conflicting lunchtime.
Finally, the system is simply more confusing. When you have lunch at a different time three days a week, at least at the beginning of the term, you feel as if you have to always be looking over your shoulder to ensure you go to class at the right time. It’s a lot easier to mistakenly go to lunch instead of class if half of the school is going there with you. There are plenty of other disadvantages, such as the fact that some students will have three periods in a row in the middle of the day, but there are also pros that are not to be overlooked.
While it is true, as stated before, that many students may feel alienated at lunchtime, it’s also true that a staggered system will bring new friendships to fruition. Most will find that at least one or two of your friends have the same time as you. Perhaps you will be forced to sit with people you don’t know as well, but what’s the harm in that? In my experience, such an environment could drive old friends closer together, or even create new ones entirely. We shouldn’t be so quick to disregard a system that breaks up the ever-so-cliquey nature of everyday Exonians.
Another benefit lies in the fact that we no longer have the entirety of the Exeter student body rushing to Elm at the same time. Despite having one fewer dining hall compared to last year, the lines at dinner and (especially) lunch are certainly shorter. Before the staggered lunches, lines could almost be out the Elm door, but now they are not nearly that long usually, plus you could simply walk out the door and go to the even shorter line at the Elm tent. Not only does this improve quality of life for students who no longer have to practically run to the dining hall only to wait in excessively long lines, but it is also a boon for everyday drivers passing through Exeter who don’t have to wait quite as long for as many students to pass.
As an extension of that, there seems to be an improvement in the general flow of services at Elm. When students come in multiple waves rather than just one, it’s easier for the dining staff to keep everything running better, making their lives easier and improving the dining experience’s efficiency for students. Food will likely come out more regularly, tables and counters will be kept clean more often, and students and teachers won’t trip over each other as much to get to different stations.
Finally, another relevant detail about the new dining system, and incidentally the one probably most frequently complained about, is the Elm tent. Indeed the tent does lack a few amenities present in Elm (bathrooms, drink machines, more sociable and larger seating), but for what it is, the tent provides a remarkably similar experience: the same hot food, desserts, sandwich materials, drink varieties, and even a salad bar, all accompanied by often shorter lines. And, while some complain about the woes of nature—ants, bees, dirt—they can also be seen as a welcome break from the old buildings and industrial cafeterias we’re so used to.
It’s difficult to design a schedule structure that works for everyone, and it may well be that many of the downsides mentioned in this article are merely inconveniences that the Exeter community will need to adapt to for the time being. The only way to solve problems that stem from staggered lunches (without making them unstaggered, which is unfeasible because of space at the moment) is to make it even more convoluted—that is, to create a multi-week schedule that allows students in different staggered lunch blocks to sometimes be able to eat together during lunch on a given day. It would mean that which blocks are the “lunch blocks” on different days would have to change every so often. However, this would require a great deal of complexity in the schedule that would vary massively from week to week and would only help to mitigate. Hence, it’s understandable that the Academy opted for the present system.
Overall, the staggered lunch blocks are doing their job As we await the finish of the new dining hall, there’s a lot to be excited about, and it will probably help the line issue even more. In the meantime, try eating outside in the tent. Meet some new people, eat outside for once, and, while you’re at it, don’t forget to thank the staff and administration for attempting to make our dining experience as smooth as possible.