By Mandy Hui’23
Seated meals have been a long-standing tradition at St. Mark’s, where students dine twice a week in designated groups for lunch– once with their advisory group and once with a community group that includes randomly assigned students from all four grades. We also have seated meals for dinner before evening chapel with advisory groups, which occurs once a month. During these meals, groups are assigned a table either in the main dining hall, small dining hall, Hinkle room, or outside in the hallway. Students and faculty help by setting up the table together and handing each other plates, utensils, napkins, and drinks. One student is usually selected to collect the food in the servery, bringing it back to their table and allowing the table to serve themselves. These meals are family-style, providing a way for the community to bond and get closer together. However, due to Covid at the beginning of 2020, this tradition came to a halt. Now, the current seniors, class of 2023, are the only individuals who have experienced seated meals.
A few weeks ago, St. Mark’s decided to bring back the seated meal traditions since Covid cases have been minimal and stagnant at the institution, with no signs of any significant spikes in the future. Therefore, community seated meals were on Monday, and advisory seated meals were now on Thursday. To slowly reintroduce these meals, the school decided to have them only in advisory groups to get students more comfortable and used to the new routine with peers they are acquainted with it. However, on Mondays, there is already a period for advisory groups to meet, causing students to complain about the repetitiveness of having both that meeting block and a lunch meal together. Students were also conflicted about the idea of community seated meals, with some enjoying the time to get to know new people and others preferring regular meals with friends.
Along with this, the school removed staggered lunches on the other days of the week. This decision inadvertently led to a large issue: long lines. Since everybody began to dine simultaneously, the lunch lines consistently ended at outer Forbes. This caused students to line up for 20 out of 30 minutes for lunch block and then rush to finish their food before hastily running to class to prevent receiving a tardy. Many students became aggravated with the rush, frustrated that they needed to sacrifice their lunch to be on time for classes.
To fix these problems, St. Mark’s revamped the lunch schedules. After less than three weeks of the newly implemented seated meal plans, the school decided to eliminate Monday seated meals and only have Thursday seated meals weekly for advisory. In addition to this, staggered lunch was brought back for the other days to prevent the overcrowded lines. However, to accommodate the return of staggered lunches, breakfast now closes at 8:30 am instead of the usual 9:00 am. This stops students from getting breakfast later when they have a free period, and it also prevents them from getting the all-students-favorite egg and cheese sandwich after chapel. Whether students love the new plan or not, sacrifices must be made.