With the publication of the 2019-2020 student handbook in the final weeks of summer, Snapchat stories were filled with students voicing their confusion and concerns about the new food ordering rules. 

At the start of the school year, Webb began restricting food deliveries from every day of the week except for community dinner nights to only Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. This change came as a surprise for many of the returning boarding students, as they were accustomed to ordering food whenever they wanted. 

Akira Hori (‘20), WSC all-school president, said, “I think that the new policy on ordering is not smart. Ordering food allows students to relieve stress by eating foods of their choice.”

Alex Huen (‘21) said, “There are certain foods that I can’t get at the dining hall that remind me of the food back home.”

Boarding students want to eat something that reminds them of home, and while the dining hall does serve a variety of options that attempt to address this need, some students still miss their  favorite meal. And sometimes this need surfaces in the middle of the school week.

In previous years students were used to having a variety of foods to choose from; Uber Eats and Doordash afforded students the ability to pick from a plethora of options, ranging from barbecue to kabob. The dining hall, especially at dinner, is not able to offer all of these options although students can still choose between a hot entrée, salad, or pasta.

However, some seniors do not feel the full impact of this new rule, due to senior privileges such as being able to get lunch off-campus on Mondays and Wednesdays.  

Sara Hagiwara (‘20) said, “The new rule doesn’t affect me that much, because I am able to leave campus on Tuesday for dinner, and Monday and Wednesday for lunch.”

While some do not seem to mind the rule change, a good portion of the student body is still largely affected, as many students used food deliveries to quell homesickness or even calm anxiety.

The main reason that the school chose to restrict food ordering times is to instill a greater sense of community at Webb.

Ken Rosenfeld, Dean of Campus Life, said, “What [the new ordering restriction] does is this allows [boarding students] an opportunity to go ahead and sit down and branch out beyond their immediate friend group and actually be able to interact with other people and hopefully interact with the day students as well. I think that is what’s going to be one of the biggest shifts, is that we’re going to see mingling between day students and boarders at dinner because of the fact that the boarders can’t just order food and just go up to their rooms and eat.”

With this new rule, the school hopes that they can forge a stronger sense of family, and that boarders will soon realize that limiting the ordering of food will ultimately reap positive benefits throughout the Webb community.