Jackie Richardson ’21 | Associate Editor
An ugly fact of community: it bonds over shared targets. This fact guides the course of history as much as it thrums through the preteen sleepover, and afterward, many of us look back on our scapegoating with horror. We should not have started a war with that country; we should not have called Violet “Violet Vagina” and dared her to call her Evan and tell him that she wanted to have 10 of his babies simply because we knew that, desperate to fit in, she would.
But we Smith students are good and high-minded. We would never be so crude as to bully someone as a bonding activity. We have diversity initiatives; queer couples hold hands on campus freely. Having said that, just because our prejudices (for the most part and on a surface level) don’t align with common bigotry doesn’t mean that we don’t have our own scapegoats. Because we do, misguidedly. And I have one in particular in mind.
My friends, Smith food is good.
I know what you’re thinking. And Smith dining has had its misses. One that stands out in my mind is a foggy vat of noodles labeled “Singapore noodles.” I remember reading that item on the menu that day and feeling hopeful; anything that resembled the Singaporean noodles I knew — all yellow noodles and char and vegetables and chili flakes and pork and, most of all, color — had to be good. Unfortunately, what was served did not resemble the Singaporean noodles I knew, the ones my Singaporean mother had introduced me to. Whoever cooked it started with a base of rice noodles. They tossed some wilting baby corns into a cloudy sauce that stretched, dubiously viscous, when I picked some of it up with the tongs.
I didn’t eat it, but I do remember it.
But Smith food is good in the way good parents are good. First, it is reliable. Bad food is rare enough that instances of it stand out in my mind, and even if one dish is bad, the rest are at least fine. The same cereals greet me in Cutter-Z every morning; apples, bananas and oranges always sit in piles in the fruit bowls. The greens in the salad bar are usually springy and crisp; fresh peppers and cucumbers are cut, carrots reliably shredded. Food is hot and usually seasoned well. I don’t worry about getting sick.
Smith food, however, isn’t just reliable. As the title of this article says, Smith food is, by and large, good. In the middle of J-Term, when winter had stripped the campus of its usual sensory stimuli (January was snowlessly gray, colorless even; you could hear chatter, laughter, stress-groans and the like while walking around, then only a windy silence), Smith food provided some. The seasoned crisp of fried chicken; fudge ripple, orange, vanilla and green tea ice cream; the fizzy snap of an apple that feels both satisfying and strange in winter.
And if, to some of you, this seems too baseline, don’t forget that, at the end of a long week, you gather with your house over tea, brownies, blondies, various cheeses, cookies, crackers and dips before moving on to your weekend.
