Ranking Law School Cuisine

Yesterday, I was sent a pointer to this blog, Fed Up with School Lunch, in which a teacher has chosen to eat the cafeteria food served to her students every day. She takes pictures of it and then gives it a food review (she liked the chicken patty, but was down on the hot dog). Unsurprisingly, she offers a few insights along with these reviews:

I worry that kids are getting offered junk and convenience food because adults believe that that's all they will eat for school lunch. Obviously we want kids to eat, but should not cater to what a 7 year old would theoretically prefer to eat.

Students are also quoted as saying that it is hard to be healthy eating many of the options that are offered and that the food isn’t very fresh. In between these observations, the blogger (who has chosen to remain anonymous), frets alternately between what this diet is doing to her insides and the fact that if she is discovered, she might be fired. (Right now the blog has shades of “Fast Food Nation,” but if the teacher starts making organic lunches for the kids, it might turn into a feel good movie, although it then might might also be viewed as a re-tread of “Julie and Julia.”)

Meanwhile, over at Concurring Opinions, Prof. Alfred Yen is doing a series of posts aimed at prospective students on “how to choose a law school.” In an earlier post, our own Dan Filler comments on a ranking of law schools based on the quality of their websites.

What about ranking the law schools based on the quality of their food? Perhaps this seems trivial (other rankings, of course, are non-trivial, wink-wink, nudge-nudge), but the quality of the food served does either add or subtract from your quality of life, either as a student or faculty member, (of course there are much more choices when you can walk or drive and can spend money as a consumer, as opposed to the blogger's captive audience of elementary school children).

The best food I have had as a student, hands-down, was when I was an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. Lots of different dining options, many of which were healthy. As a faculty member, again hands-down, the best food was at Cumberland Law School, where there was not only a cafeteria open to anyone that had a wide variety of fresh and tasty options, but also a faculty club. You had to dress up to get into it and it was subsidized.  It had table linens and fresh flowers and fresh brewed iced tea and fruit.  Years later, and I still pine for that faculty club.

Is your law school cafeteria food healthy? Plentiful? Subsidized and Cheap? Tasty? Merged with the undergrads?  Convenient? Open late? Pre-packaged? Outsourced? Offer good/bad service? A money maker/loser? Non-existent?  Comments are open, and now, given that my blood sugar is at a low, luckily I am off to dinner at our school's annual APALSA event. 

Comments

[Tim Zinnecker]

Miriam, I will concur in your glowing assessment of the Cumberland dining experience! Oh to relive the "dollar day" experiences!

[Tung Yin]

Let's see -- summing up various undergrad, grad school, and law school cafeterias from my time as a student, prof, and visiting prof (letter grades):

Caltech (1984-88): dorm kitchen, D. The food was so bad that sometimes we'd walk in to the dining hall, take a sniff, and walk out en masse.

Cal-Berkeley (1990-95): on campus, C-. However, there were so many great places just off-campus on Telegraph Avenue that it wasn't a big deal.

U of Iowa (2002-09): C/B. C was for the law school, B was for the cafeteria in the nearby dorm, which was $6 for all you can eat. The law school stopped offering hot options (except soup) the last few years, although there was a made to order sandwich bar.

U of Illinois (2009): A-. A hot grill! Healthy options, and also burgers and fries. And fountain sodas, which are better than canned or bottled sodas.

Lewis & Clark (2009-present): B+. Made to order sandwiches and burgers (but alas no fries). Soup, salad bar, and specials of the day. An effective 10% discount if you load up your ID card with $150 or more at a time.

[Miriam Cherry]

So far, we have a limited sample size. Right now it looks like the winners are Cumberland and U of Illinois.

[Matt]

I can't say much about law school food at different places, but I had a similar idea some years ago, while presenting a paper at the Rutgers/Princeton grad student conference. In the "Philosophical Gourmet Report" at the time Rutgers and Princeton were 1 and 2 or 2 and 3 or something, but the food at Rutgers the first day of the conference was so much less good than that at Princeton the second day that I thought we should come up with a "literal philosophical gourmet report", where departments could be ranked by the quality of the food they provide after department talks, the restaurants that speakers are taken to, whether they provide a subsidy for students going out after talks, etc. Alas, the needed information proved too hard to gather, and potential speakers and students must still make their choices as to where to present papers or study without this important information.