In 1639 the first head of Harvard College was fired largely because he served poor food. Around 1800 food battles became so violent that the University had to abandon the idea of a common table. In 1926 Dean C. N. Greenough said he would welcome suggestions on how to solve the "food problem." Last year Dean Bender asked the Student Council to conduct a poll on what students thought of the food. Throughout this 300 year history of food problems many changes in the dining system occurred, always whenever protests became widespread and proved to be well founded.

Food complaints fall easily into a cyclical pattern. First, the founding fathers insisted that all students be served at a common board. After 200 years of establishing a reputation for poor food, the University abandoned the Commons and let students fend for themselves around the square and in clubs. Agitation for a University-sponsored dining hall soon began and resulted in a voluntary commons at Memorial Hall in 1874. Support of this system finally waned, and in 1923 Memorial Hall was abandoned. Immediately pressure began for a good dining system. This movement ended in the present house system, which has grown into a sprawling $3,000,000 business. Once again, student protest has been rising, attacking the quality of this system.

Foul Hasty Pudding

The University's food problem started very early in fact it was the school's first problem and quickly developed into a major crisis. The Pilgrim Fathers, eager for as many parental restrictions as possible, decreed that all students must eat at a common table, an insistence which plagued administrators for the next 200 years. With Mr. Nathaniel Eaton as the school's entire faculty, students ate in his home. He was charged with serving mostly "porrige and pudding, and that very homely ... without butter or suet." The students maintained they received "hasty pudding with goat's dung in it, and mackerel served with their guts in them." They further claimed, "The swines and they had share and share alike." Because of general discontent with Eaton's conduct and the proved charges about the food, he was fined, deposed, and forced to flee to Virginia in 1639. He later died in debtors' prison.

Reverend Henry Dunster succeeded Eaton and built the first college buildings, placing the dining room in Harvard Hall. In spite of his more orderly system, and the largest kitchen in New England, the College had established a reputation for poor food that, according to one historian, "clung to it for more than two centuries."

Food Fights

Toward the end of the eighteen century, students developed the habit of expressing disapproval of the food by throwing it around the room and staging huge class fights. One student was suspended for hitting a professor with a baked potato. If he had missed the professor, it would have been considered part of a normal fight. In 1766, the disapproval took the form of the The Great Butter Rebellion, which was only quelled when the Corporation requested the Royal Governor to read the Overseers' resolutions and enforce them, which fortunately occurred peacefully. Several years later, the Rotton Cabbage Rebellion occurred, which was settled without outside aid.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the culinery battles raged so fiercely that the Administration took radical steps to keep the idea of a common eating table. Since most of the warfare took the form of inter-class fights, the Common was transferred to University Hall in 1816, and each class had its own room on the first floor. But this only made things worse, for the restriction turned out to heighten class spirit. Circular holes in the walls soon appeared, and missiles went flying through them. A typical freshman-sophomore fight on a Sunday evening in 1819 was commemorated in the poem, "The Rebelliad:"

When Nathan threw a piece of bread And hit Abijah on the head, The wrathful freshman, in a trice, Sent back another bigger slice, Which, being buttered pretty well, Made greasy work wher'er it fell, And thus arose a fearful battle, The coffee-cups and saucers rattle, The bread-bowls fly at woeful rate, And break full many a learned pate.

Regardless of their shins and pates, The bravest seiz'd the butter-plates, And rushing headlong to the van, Sustained the conflict man to man.

The cause of these riots, as explained by Dr. Peabody, was that "the food... was so mean in quality, so poorly cooked, and so coarsely served, as to disgust those who had been accustomed to the decencies of the table, and to encourage a mutinous spirit, rude manners, and ungentlemanly habits; so that the dining halls were seats of boisterous misrule and nurseries of rebellion."

End of Commons

As both the food and atmosphere of the Commons deteriorated, most student withdrew to the peace and plenty of private boarding houses. The Commons was finally abandoned in 1849, and President Sparks said, "It is improbable that the Commons will again be revived."

Sixteen years later, Thayer Commons was opened. This was actually an independent, voluntary, non-profit dining association, supervised by Regina Bonarum, "Queen of the Goodies." The demand for Thayer was so large that in 1874, at the suggestion of President Eliot, the dining association moved to Memorial Hall, which had been originally planned for nothing but the Commencement dinner.

Editing at Mem Hall