Saturday night. A friend calls to ask me what I’m going to do for dinner.
I reply that my House is taking a trip to Demera, and return the question to him.
His response? Game Night at Bartlett.
Which RSO?
He doesn’t know, mumbles something about Go and Mahjongg, postulates that it’s run by one of the Asian organizations. But, does it really matter? There’s free bubble tea and even the prospect of a free dinner!
I hear myself: Wow, jealous! I have to pay for my Saturday night meal.
So the conversation continues. He has to go. We hang up.
The RSO, as it turns out, was PanAsia. I’d never heard of PanAsia up to this point, and evidently, neither had my friend, before or after the officially named “Game Day.” When asked about his experience at Game Day, he told me that his group had stood in line for the bubble tea and then left, unwilling to play games in the hour-long wait to get the free meal.
It’s a common story. My friend here is guilty of this sort of grab-the-free-food-and-run mentality. But so am I. And, odds are, you are too.
Thinking back on two and a half quarters, overstuffed memories of long lines and various buffet-style trays featuring everything from caramel apples to pierogi to Jimmy John’s come wandering back. I’ve been reeled into events, lectures, meetings, with the prospect of free food so many times that they’ve all begun to melt together into one continuous feast in my memory. All free food is not created equal, however. Some events (see: International Food Festival) are more “successful” than others, i.e., I get my hands on a whole plate of free food as opposed to one measly piece of candy.
These kinds of memories (and the sheer number of them), as well as the exchange I had with my friend, are a little problematic and pretty embarrassing to me. Is free food really the most powerful motivation for students to attend an event or do, well, anything? Why do we so easily fall victim to the free food trap?
I’d venture to say that hardly any of us are actually underfed on campus, especially those on the meal plan. One could counter this with the argument that dining hall food is decidedly lackluster, occasionally downright terrible, so the prospect of putting anything out of the norm into our excitement-deprived stomachs is especially tantalizing. Yet that doesn’t really explain the tendency of crazed students, when given the opportunity, to grab as much free food as possible even when 1) they’re not actually hungry, or 2) the food isn’t very good, and 3) so much time (sometimes more than an hour) is sacrificed just standing in line waiting behind all the other free food repeat offenders. Why are we willing to do so much for so little, if that “little” means free food?
It’s a fascinating phenomenon that’s confined not only to college campuses but America as a whole. Some people are skeptical. They have a point when they ask, “What country isn’t obsessed with food?”
But the way we obsess is different. In other nations, the food is vibrant and delicious, but it’s not the main course; that, of course, would be conversation. Food is considered a communal experience, enjoyed slowly and with good company. Here? The obsession takes a form dictated by our instant gratification, nonstop work-and-play lifestyles; we love fast food, thoughtless food, and, of course, free food. The college campus, where events come in swarms and students never have a minute or a quarter to spare, is the perfect microcosm of the American food culture. Wednesday’s $1 shakes are an example of college food culture. So are daily food study breaks during finals (whose idea was it that the best way to de-stress is to eat cookies, pies, and donuts after a long day of being locked up in a room or the library, crouched over and immobile?). Nowhere is this most evident, though, than in the ubiquitous practice of luring students in with free food. Both sides—the enticers and the enticed—participate, and both sides lose.
That’s not to say I’m against free food. My friend with the bubble tea thinks I am, and has concluded that I’m against all that is good in humanity. While that may be true, what I’m really critical of is the way free food becomes an end in itself rather than being a means to another end. Generating interest and membership in RSOs or other campus groups, as well as promoting specific initiatives to students, get lost under the weight of all the free food. Students are blindsided by frozen chocolate-covered bananas and consequently sign petitions for causes they don’t necessarily believe in (Green Campus Initiative employed this strategy to great success: No signature? No food). The RSO itself is increasingly the afterthought; our fixation on “free plus food” grows. Not only does this promote an unhealthy relationship with food, contributing to weight gain in college, but continues to perpetuate a consumerist mindset that becomes more deep-seated with every bite of that free sandwich you just grabbed.
So downplay the free food, and make students stop, look, and listen through other means. It will be difficult, but it’s possible.
Emily Wang is a first-year in the College.
Excuse me, but I don’t quite know where you have been if you have not heard of PanAsia. During Fall Quarter, we had the Moon Festival and during Winter Quarter, we had the Lunar New Year Show in collaboration with 10 other RSOs. (By the way, the Lunar New Year Show was NOT free and 240 people showed up.) We have 5 events for our Spring Festival this year, and might I add, only Game Day had free food and one event has free refreshments. Our events are geared towards exposing the rest of campus to Asian and Asian American culture. If the event happens to fall during meal hours, we offer food. Do you want to go to an event and starve? I do not think so. In contrast to your friend who simply got bubble tea and left, many people actually stayed at the event to play some of the games. Moreover, the fact that you are calling out PanAsia and GCI is quite rude. How do you know that we are “only” enticing people with food. Like you stated, you do not know anything about us.
In addition, whoever commented as Nelson Zhu, please get a life and do not pretend to be other people.
As a first year in the college, it is possible you may have not heard of PanAsia due to the simple lack of time spent on the University of Chicago campus. To debrief you, we are a well established organization with a traditional Spring Festival, including many events such as Game Day which you describe. Most of our events historically have had hundreds of students in attendance (with or without food)- so we certainly do not have a small footprint.
As president of this organization, I can vouch for RSO use for free food, specifically PanAsia’s use of this inventive at Game Night. Clearly, our goals in using free food have been achieved.
1. To increase awareness about our events and existence of our organization (to which even you eventually learned the name of and probably won’t forget given this attack on our organization)- success.
2. To entice people to participate in our event- check. Even if only one person shows up for free food, but ends up learning that an Asian game called “Go” exists or even goes further to try it out, then that’s exactly what we had hoped for.
I’m sure that every organization on campus understands that with free food, there will be people who come, and go, with the sole purpose of obtaining free food. However, that’s a small sacrifice to pay when the food incentive is one of the most effective way to spread our name, and our cause.
I for one, am a strong proponent of the free food incentive. For example, Polish Students Association held a Paczki Day event where I, hungry in the reg, ventured out to experience. While I came and went with the pastry, I also learned about the tradition. Furthermore, students supporting the formation of a Socially Responsible Investment Committee have held frequent free food events to get signatures, and awareness- to which food can be obtained with or without signatures.
One cannot deny the effectiveness of free food in terms of publicity, awareness, and often times participation in events. It’s unfortunate that your group of friends happened to be one amongst the student body to come and go with food in hand, but we do recognize that it happens and it is also not the RSOs responsibility to change the attitude of certain student body. Instead, it is those who come for the games and the food, or those who come for the food and discover the games, or even those who come for the food and learn the name “PanAsia”- that we look to when defining the success of our event.
So you assert: “Campus groups should find more innovative methods of self-promotion than free food.”
Perhaps what you don’t realize is that PanAsia like GCI and other campus groups, actually have made, and do make an incredible effort to do so, and I suggest you should learn more about the organizations before calling them out.
—
Emily Chen
PanAsia President
Class of 2012
As a board member in PanAsia, I would first like to agree with your point: RSOs use free food to get students to trudge through the cold weather and from their studies, to come to an event. This is not due to a RSOs lack of creativity though. This is because it works. Our student body, time and time again, has been proven to respond to incentives like free food or free t-shirts in order to entice them to come to an event. For you to attack PanAsia though in an article, which you are directing to all RSOs on campus, is misinformed on your part.
We are right now in the middle of our Spring Festival with two major events coming up. On April 22nd, Wong Fu Productions is coming to campus and on May 26th, Dale Talde, a competitor on Top Chef, is also coming to speak. These are two events that we have planned since January and if you have not seen the Facebook events, Facebook groups, posters on campus, and publicity emails sent through 15 different listhosts about these events, I am not sure how much more we can advertise.
I am sorry that you and your group of friends have not heard of us, but now I think you won’t be able to forget us. Before you are so quick to label us as just another RSO with food, come to one of our events. You can see that people come whether food is provided or not. That is due to the events in the past where food was served and the publicity we do. If you have the secret to successful event planning, let us know. If not, leave it to the RSOs like PanAsia, ASU and GCI (all of whom you fault in this article) to make things happen instead of writing a criticism on it like you have, without offering any solutions.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/05/17/freshly-baked-space-kimchi/
This is an excellent piece from the Stanford Daily discussing the use of free food especially in Asian clubs trying to celebrate Asian culture. Maybe you should give it a read.