College life and cafeteria-style dining may seem inexorably linked, but a trip to Rauner Special Collections reveals that eating at Dartmouth has evolved from a decentralized one-man-for-himself system to the current setup of slick credit card-style paying.
Prior to the establishment of Dartmouth Dining Association -- now known as Dartmouth Dining Services -- students received their board at eating clubs around the town of Hanover. Each of these clubs hosted around 50 to 150 boarders per year and, on average, cost a mere $4.50 per week for all the food a hungry student could eat.
Most of these clubs were owned and managed by the females of local households and were named after them. About one-third of the club members worked serving food in exchange for board. Some of the more popular eating clubs were Brown's, Davison's, Rood's and especially Smalley's.
Rood's often saw 100 students packed into the Main Street house every day, three times a day, for a home-cooked meal from "Mother Rood." The students loved her personality, and on rare occasion, they found her arguing with a professor on behalf of another student.
The holiday menus didn't hurt, either. In 1929, the entire menu of the Christmas dinner consisted of a fruit cup, celery, olives, tomato bisque, roast stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, boiled onions, hubbard squash, turnips, plum pudding, strawberry ice cream, cookies, rolls, mixed nuts, fruits, hard candy and coffee.
But arguably, the best eating club around was Ma Smalley's. It unofficially began over the 1913-14 Christmas break when 10 students who stayed during interim asked to have their meals at Mary "Ma" Smalley's house.
Ma Smalley, according to archives, couldn't refuse; the students came back after break and brought more and more people, and Ma Smalley's eating club was born. One student described her as having "pungent wit, sense of zest, and rollicking good belly laughs [that] were rich in Falstaffian tremors."
Dartmouth Dining Association was created in 1902 "to furnish its members with board at cost and such quality that they determine," but eating clubs didn't take a major hit until the 1920-21 school year, when a motion was passed to require all first-year students to board at College Hall. In 1937 Thayer Dining Hall was constructed, and just four years later Dartmouth's eating clubs became extinct as Ma Smalley's closed its doors.
Thayer Dining Hall served mostly upperclassmen. In addition to the main dining hall, it also included Hovey Grill in the basement. In 1944, Hovey Grill was turned into a dinner club and served meals for 75 cents apiece. In 1951, dining became less segregated when College Hall and Thayer Hall consolidated, and by 1966, desegregation of freshmen and upperclass students was complete.
That same year, a compulsory dining plan was approved, which meant that the entire student body had to purchase a meal plan. However, the plan did not go into effect for a few more years because of space limitations -- something that has been a relatively consistent part of Dartmouth.
The early meal plans consisted of a set number of meals per week. In 1986, Dartmouth introduced a Declining Balance Account (DBA) card. In addition to the regular meal plan, administrators, staff, faculty and students could put money into an account in which they could buy food from on campus areas other than the main dining hall.
In the late 1980s, Homeplate was launched in response to an increase in demand for healthier food. Its menu then was similar to that of today; in a typical week, its main entrees would include chicken satay, grilled tofu burger, eggplant rollatini, spinach squares and grilled bluefish.
Full Fare -- the main dining hall -- served items such as spaghetti carbonara, glazed pork chops, veal provencal, tuna noodle casserole and grilled cheese sandwiches.
By 1989, Thayer Hall had grown to include Full Fare, Homeplate, A La Carte, Hovey's Underground Pub and Ma Thayer's Snack Bar. That year, DDA assumed control of Collis Cafe, which had previously reported to the Dean of the College, and the Hopkins Center's Courtyard Snack Bar, which had previously reported to the Provost. The new association, which included all of these dining establishments, was called Dartmouth Dining Services.
Before the consolidation of Courtyard Snack Bar (now Courtyard Cafe), Collis Cafe and the DDA eateries into DDS, students could purchase food from Collis and Courtyard but had to charge it to their student account.
After the 1989 consolidation, students could use a meal equivalency transfer to purchase food at either of these two locations. They exchanged one of their regular meals for $2.50 worth of food from Collis or Courtyard. If students purchased any more, they could still charge the excess amount to their student account.
The current meal plan system started in the 1995-96 school year.
Since then, dining at Dartmouth has continued to transform. Tucker Rossiter, Director of Dining Services, says that DDS keeps dining up-to-date so the students don't get bored. "We try to keep things so that there's enough variety," he said.
Last year, the Kosher/Halal dining hall The Pavilion opened, and DDS' newest project is a smoothie bar, called "The Blend." The bar is located in Thayer Dining Hall and is tentatively scheduled to open Winter term.
DDS currently owns 13 eating establishments, including one at the Dartmouth Skiway. But the ones in Thayer Dining Hall remain the most popular.
When the Student Life Initiative was announced a few years ago, some in the administration proposed decentralizing dining to the residential level, but students overwhelmingly disapproved of the idea.
"They decided that [decentralized dining] is not what Dartmouth needs," Rossiter said. "Students enjoy eating together."
