Cultural Meals Generate Conversation in U-M Dining Halls

As students at the University of Michigan inevitably have different preferences and tastes, consensus may be difficult to find when choosing menu options for campus dining halls. U-M administrators, in response, developed plans in the mid-1990s to provide students with alternative choices in campus cafeterias. Out of this effort was born the special cultural meals that occur throughout the year for students. Coordinated with the Trotter Multicultural Center, the meals attempt to break the monotony of campus dining by offering authentic entrees.

Four separate ethnic celebrations take place within the dining halls each year. Hispanic-American, Native-American, Pacific-American, and African-American cuisine is served in correspondence with multicultural events occurring throughout the university. As far as the specific meal choices on the cultural menus, university dining services coordinates with student cultural groups for their ideas for specific dishes. For instance, members of the Muslim Student Association worked hand-in-hand with university dining to plan a special meal celebrating Eid.

While the cultural meals do offer alternative food choices for students, Kathryn Whiteside, Coordinator of Menu Systems and Nutrition Information, claims that they serve another purpose: to create a dialogue between students of different cultures and ethnicities.   

“For most of the time, these meals generate conversation and a good dialogue about what they mean. The students should know that we are going to listen to them,” she said.

Whiteside claims that their student outreach efforts are profitable, as the meals retain a sense of authenticity. “The menus are fluid to some extent. We try to research the different cultures and be as authentic as we can with the menus. However, even with that being said, there needs to be a certain amount of acceptance with the food that you are serving.”

Sometimes the dining public’s acceptance is hard to grasp. At the NBC headquarters in New York City, controversy erupted two weeks ago when NBC chef Leslie Calhoun served fried chicken, collard greens, and black-eyed peas in honor of Black History Month. Critics of the meal, including comedian Wanda Sykes, expressed their concerns that the menu was offensive to African-Americans. U-M provided a similar meal to its students in dining halls, with students able to eat baked chicken, fried catfish strips, collard greens, and cornbread, among other items, on February 4.

According to Peter Logan, Director of Communications for university housing, the African-American themed meal has comprised of African, Caribbean, and traditional “Southern” foods. After years of considering serving these three different types of foods, the residence hall menu review committee decided to focus on predominantly serving “Southern” foods.

“Consensus each year was that a menu of traditional Southern foods would be most positively received by our customers. The menu was to include BBQ ribs, macaroni and cheese, fried catfish, candied sweet potatoes, and collard greens as a minimum,” Logan said in an email.

Whiteside claims that while there have been critics to the similar African-American celebration meal in New York City, the African-American meal, and every cultural meal in the dining hall, has been met with enthusiasm.

“The student response has been very enthusiastic and very positive. When there are negative comments, we respond appropriately and listen to their positions. Michigan is an educational facility, in which we try to expose people to things that they may not be exposed to in other parts of life. In view of the fact that education is what we’re all about, there is not much controversy surrounding the meals,” she said.

University dining invites all students at Michigan to comment on its cultural meals program. As daily feedback is received through its Facebook page and comment cards in campus dining halls, Whiteside claims that student comments allows the dining staff to improve their service.

“We solicit all feedback. The main driving force behind our menu is the feedback we get from students,” she said.

• Facebook Comments
• Site Comments

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out