Oberlin has two main dining halls, Stevenson and Dascomb. Stevenson is all-you-can-eat (although I haven't seen very many people doing the several-helpings thing), whereas Dascomb is set up for each person to get an entree, a few sides, and a drink. If you're curious about what sorts of food is served day-to-day, Campus Dining Services posts their menus online here.
Dascomb has these fantastic booths a little outside the main dining area, which are great for spreading out to do homework on. I've seen many students doing just this: working on group projects over lunch, or doing problem sets, or writing papers. One of the things that I noticed the first time I was in Dascomb for a lunchtime break from studying is the amount of students who get their food in a take-out container: a reusable take-out container is given to a student, they get food to eat later, and the container is returned to Dascomb to be washed. The program seems really convenient - especially if you have a class or two that make it difficult to snag dinner at a reasonable time. I haven't tried it out yet, but I inevitably will. My schedule involves an evening intro economics class, and by the time I get out of the class, my brain is so fried all I want to do is go home and watch The Colbert Report. It'd be nice to have more than snack foods in my dorm at those times.
Stevie is larger, and, in my experience, louder. There's a few enclosed rooms where various special-interest groups have group meals at set times during the week. Off the top of my head, I know there's a French table, a Japanese table, a Spanish table... I believe there's also a time when Sci-Fi Hall has a group meal? The language tables function as a way for students to converse in the language in a less academic environment. The only experience I have with this type of thing is at Japanese table, but I would assume it's pretty typical - a dozen students or so (sometimes more) bring their food in, hang out, and talk to everyone else. There's usually two or three teachers at the Japanese table to facilitate the conversation flow, which I really appreciate; it gives you a chance to get to know your professors outside of "that lady who gives me tests" as well as giving you a chance to ask about vocabulary.
Both halls offer some sort of vegetarian or vegan options, although this seems to translate into a whole lot of pasta and marinara sauce with salads for the vegans. The vegetarian options are a little more expansive - last night, I had eggplant parmagiana, and there's vegetarian pizza/pasta/other foods. They also both offer a salad bar, which is fairly extensive but doesn't seem to change that much (lettuce, spinach, bell peppers, onions, cheese, cucumbers, black beans, chickpeas, etc., with a few different dressings).
As I've mentioned before, I've had both awful and delicious food here. The other day for lunch, I had pierogies with spinach, onion, and sundried tomato, which were fantastic, and I've eaten some pretty darn good mac'n'cheese. However, I've also had "French onion" soup that tasted like vegetable stock with boiled onions, so the food isn't on one end of the spectrum all the time.
I do have to eat breakfast, though, and so today I walked out to the IGA supermarket a few minutes away from campus. The IGA is about ten minutes away by bicycle, but I walked with a non-bicycle-owning friend for the company today. Groceries in Oberlin can be obtained in a few places...
- The IGA. This is where I go for 90% of my groceries. It's a small-ish supermarket - at least, it seems small to this girl raised on suburban grocery stores - but it's also a locally-owned franchise. That alone is a good reason to put up with slightly higher prices than the Wal-Mart outside town, because the IGA puts more money back into the local Oberlin economy. They sell everything you would expect in a standard grocery store; although the produce section is much more limited than I'm used to, I'm pretty sure that's a function of being in small-town Ohio. This Seattle girl is used to trotting off to Uwajimaya for all my exotic fruit cravings.
- The Wilder Decafe. This little room in the basement of Wilder (the student union that also hosts the campus Sexual Information Center, the mailroom, and other useful places) sells sandwiches and smoothies as part of Dining Services, but they also sell "groceries." This means a lot of prepared foods like Easy Mac, snack foods, and so on - although you can get milk and other groceries here, Decafe tends to be more expensive than biking out to the IGA. Milk (half a gallon) is $1.99 at IGA and $3.00 at Decafe; cereals are $4 or so - less on sale - at IGA and can get up to about $6.50 at Decafe. However, I can't deny the convenience of having a place to get stuff so close to my dorm. During the winter, I foresee fewer long hauls out to IGA and more popping into Decafe for instant oatmeal and soup.
- Wal-Mart. There's a superstore about fifteen minutes away from campus on bike that sells groceries, has a deli, and so on, so if you're feeling like a single trip to pick up popcorn along with your new movie and the TV to watch it on, I suppose this would be the place to go (although... I don't know why you would need a TV, really. I don't know anyone who owns a TV, given that we have access to one in the lounge with standard cable, and things like Dr. Who that require a special channel like BBC America have a big enough following that there's watching parties for the new episodes, so you don't have to pay for fancy TV. I digress). A large portion of the student body is pretty reluctant to go to Wally's for various moral/ethical reasons. I'm part of this faction. Although the prices are lower, I would prefer to give my money to the IGA. (Also, the ride/walk to IGA through tree-lined residential streets is nicer than the commercial district-then-three-lane-highway one out to Wal-Mart).
- There's an Asian grocery called Kim's Market in town that also functions as a Korean restaurant, which I have yet to explore. According to rumor, the prepared food is pretty good, but the grocery store seems to be an "I'll take the best that I can get" situation to those of us who are used to Uwajimaya, H-Mart, Ranch 99, or all three within twenty minutes' drive.
- CVS. Apparently you can get groceries at the drugstore? There's a CVS a little outside the main two or three streets of "downtown" Oberlin. Assuming it's like other drugstores that I've been in, there's about two aisles of cereal and instant pasta - no fruit, and a paltry dairy selection. This is, however, not a 100% guarantee; I haven't been to CVS yet.
Today, on my IGA run, I found almost-ripe Comice pears in the produce, which means that in two days I will eat nothing but sugary, juicy, delicious pears. To give you an idea of prices in the IGA, my purchases totaled about $34. I purchased: three Comice pears, a pound of strawberries, five bananas, a half-gallon of milk, a tub of hummus, a box of Wheat Thins, three boxes of cereal, a half-gallon tub of generic chocolate ice cream, knockoff Nutella ("hazelnut chocolate spread"), and a package of cookies. I consider this to be a pretty good haul. It was certainly a pain to bring back; the price I paid for walking with a friend and talking the entire way was losing access to my bike baskets.
So what does that mean for my eating situation? I usually eat two meals in CDS - Dacomb and Stevie - and have breakfasts in my room with cold cereal, some strawberries or a banana, and coffee. Due to my busy schedule on certain days - between 9 AM and 10 PM on Wednesdays, I am out of class for a grand total of five hours, spaced out into strange 90 minute/two hour breaks in which I frantically try to do readings, homework, studying, and eating at the same time - I occasionally wind up eating baby carrots, hummus, crackers, and cheese for dinner. It's been consistently about 75 to 80 degrees lately, but when it's colder I'm sure I'll begin craving soups and rice and pasta. I've asked my parents to go to H-Mart and buy microwaveable rice, prepackaged curry, and things like that for these times in a few months.
As for others' eating routines, there's a few ways to go. Almost all first-years are on either 19 or 14 meals a week. Many of them eat breakfast in CDS - pancakes, eggs, a rotation of pastries, etc. - but I know a few people who do the same thing I do. Older students can choose to reduce the number of meals they receive for a week in steps down to five meals a week, which seems to be what people do if they're living "off-campus" with a group of friends.
OSCA is the other big name in Oberlin food. It stands for Oberlin Student Cooperative Association; the individual sections of OSCA are called "co-ops." You can live in a co-op, as well, but a lot more students (650 or so, I believe) eat in a co-op. By pitching in to help cook, students can save money on meal plans (as far as I know, students in a co-op get one meal a week to be used in Stevie or Dascomb). People who live or eat in co-ops swear by them, although they are definitely not for everyone. Some of Oberlin's official student bloggers have written extensively about OSCA, both living and eating therein: The Mechanics of OSCA, On Being OSCA, Living in the Harkland, and many more under the "Dorms, Co-ops & Other Housing" section of the Oberlin blogs. OSCA reserves spots for first-years, so if you're big into knowing where your food is from, social responsibility and food, or making tofu, OSCA is a viable option. I don't feel qualified to elaborate on this further, not being a co-op resident/diner, but there's plenty of resources to find out about this.
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