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A two-panel cartoon in the 1914 Mirror summed up student opinion of the new men\u2019s dining commons at John Bertram. Titled \u201cTragedy in Two Scenes,\u201d the first panel depicted the dinner menu: \u201cbeans, no catsup.\u201d The second panel showed the breakfast menu: \u201cOatmeal, with catsup.\u201d<\/p>\n
From that uncertain start (until then, Bates students ate off campus) would grow a Bates reverence for community dining, and today Bates is poised to spend eight figures affirming that ideal, announcing plans to build new dining commons, as well as a new residential cluster (see story, page 6).<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s a family digesting their day around a dinner table or 600 students in Memorial Commons chattering about March Madness, thesis, or Iraq, the magic of mealtime is the same as it ever was. \u201cIn the pleasure of eating…cheered by the music of the knives and forks, [students] are ready to discuss anything, from the weightiest matters of state to the last ball game or worst \u2018flunk,\u2019\u201d the The Bates Student noted way back in 1887.<\/p>\n
Later, amidst the hard-core work ethic of Bates in the 1960s, President Reynolds added a missing ingredient to student life \u2014 leisure! \u2014 by relaxing social rules and giving students more control of time and space. Reynolds\u2019 first step symbolized this Bates glasnost: He closed the women\u2019s dining hall at Rand and inaugurated coed dining at Memorial Commons, promising \u201cgracious, leisurely dining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students, in full voice for bigger changes, gave the move mild approval, since any coed benefit was offset by overcrowding. \u201cGraciousness is not enhanced when students wander around…trying to see if you have finished dessert so they may have a seat,\u201d noted the Student.<\/p>\n
Better days were ahead. Short Term, initially designed to hustle students through Bates in three years, succeeded for the opposite reason: It offered more time, either \u201cto go off chasing ideas,\u201d as Professor of Physics Robert Kingsbury said, or for other delights. A year before the Summer of Love, the \u201966 Short Term blew the collective Bates student mind. \u201cCoed everything!\u201d enthused a student after Short Term. \u201cThat made it better!\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, trying to rally around leisure can feel like championing the cause of the endangered elfin tree fern. It\u2019s probably important, but gee whiz. As President Hansen said in her inaugural address, \u201cWe need…undisciplined time \u2014 time to listen, speak, think, imagine. What I am talking about is endangered because it looks like unproductive time, the rarest of commodities in a world that measures everything by its outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Restaurateur Deborah Hansen de Haro \u201986, profiled on page 42, gets the concept, too, and she works darn hard so her customers have time to smell the pinchos. Her own Short Term in Spain, where food, says writer Doug Hubley, \u201cis more than fuel,\u201d partly inspired de Haro to open the restaurant. \u201cWe spend so many hours working,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need to stop and focus on pleasures.\u201d<\/p>\n