University Dining shows more interest in a movie trilogy than Latin American and Indigenous students.
Wednesday night, Fountain Dining Hall saw an incredibly well-done theme dinner based on the “Back to the Future” series; Oct. 21, 2015 is the date on which protagonist Marty McFly arrives when he travels “back to the future.” The serving area and entryway were decorated with cardboard models of vintage cars, movie posters and fake .45 vinyl records, and visitors could get their pictures taken with props in the makeshift photo-booth. The seating area was even nicer, decked out to mimic the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance from the films. Balloon sculptures of fish, and octopuses and blue reflective streamers decorated the space, with a 10-foot orange octopus dominating the room as a juggernaut of balloon sea creatures.
The food, mostly just ordinary food with creative, “Back to the Future” themed names, didn’t fall short either; “Nobody Calls Me Chicken a la King” and “Biff’s Meathead Meatloaf” were two of my personal favorites. I even tried some of the Tang and Ovaltine that were available to drink, and I had a piece of the “OUTATIME” cake, which had a frosting picture of the iconic DeLorean’s license plate. It was clear, University Dining went all out, and it spared no effort in making this themed dinner hands-down the best one this year.
However, the fact that this dinner was “hands-down the best one this year” is a little concerning; earlier this month, was the “Taste of Latin America” dinner Oct. 15, and the “Indigenous North America” dinner Oct. 12. The “Indigenous North America” dinner featured a few themed decorations, small displays of Native American art and tools, with the largest item that I can remember being a deer skin, and not much else. The food was certainly good, although I wouldn’t have known it was supposed to fit the “Indigenous” theme if I hadn’t been told — wild rice, smoked salmon and glazed pork are pretty commonplace, especially in a dining hall that routinely serves dishes like couscous and tofu. The “Taste of Latin America” dinner went a bit further regarding both authenticity and decoration. Flags of several Latin American countries hung in the entryway and the seating area featured some posters with very basic information about the countries, for example, “Uruguay has four times as many cows as people.” The food, at least, was accurate.
I would not call any of these dinners a failure. Many students, myself included, had great things to say about them, but why on Earth is the university putting an order of magnitude more effort into a dinner based on a few ‘80s movies than one based on more than 500 years of Latin American culture and one based on tens of thousands of years of Indigenous peoples’ cultures?
The very fact that these dinners exist is a great stride in the right direction, and based on horror stories from last year (i.e. the Cinco de Mayo event at Case Dining Hall with sombreros and chocolate “mustaches”), the “Taste of Latin America” was a great improvement in the way of cultural sensitivity. Nevertheless, this university has a long way to go if we still care so much more about the adventures of Marty McFly than the histories and cultures of Indigenous and Latin American peoples.
