<p>Thanks, D is very happy. Congrats on UVM Honors College!</p>
<p>"Bon App</p>
<p>That’s good news re Bon Appetit, they seem to have a good reputation. Sorry your daughter will miss it, Alf!</p>
<p>Not a day too soon! My son - who’s a rising third year - is thrilled. Of course he moves into a mod with likely a limited meal plan. Alf - any words of wisdom on meal plans and mods?</p>
<p>Most students that I knew who lived in mods took the minimum meal plan, which was about $100 per semester, loaded onto their college debit card. They then cooked most of their own meals in the mod kitchens. Both of our kids saved a substantial amount over eating at the food service, and I think that they probably ate better as well. Those mods also purchased farm ‘shares’ that gave them a lot of produce. We agreed to give our kids the same amount of money that we would have spent on the full meal plan, and they acknowledged that this allowed them to eat well and go out to eat at least a couple of times a week.</p>
<p>With the new food service, which will use more products from the Hampshire farm, I wonder if students will still be able to buy farm shares.</p>
<p>It is also interesting to me that even though the original food service, Saga Dining Services, is now long gone, students still call the Dining Room, “Saga”, and probably always will.</p>
<p>The name Saga amuses me - as in “The Saga of Saga”. Pretty funny. I’m very glad they’re nearly in the past. It was the one thing I wasn’t happy about at Hampshire. I know good dining services exist - my younger son starts at Bates this fall and their food is superb. thanks for the info, Alf - I figured that’s what we’d do. My son’s really psyched about the mod he’ll be in - it’s next door to Emily Dickinson Hall and he’s a theater major - and equally as excited as his mod-mates.</p>
<p>The current company is Sodexo. Saga Food Services apparently left many years ago. I’ve heard that the dining halls at several colleges have acquired the nickname, “SAGA” (all capitals, even though I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t an acronym). The company seems to no longer exist; I remember that it ran food services at UVM, when I went there in the 70s (!!).</p>
<p>Is your son in Enfield or Greenwich (EDH is between them)? We know all about this, as our daughter is (about to be, ‘was’) a theater major too.</p>
<p>Hi Alf, he’ll be in Greenwich. So our kids have <em>got</em> to know each other. She didn’t just do her Div III project with Through the Looking Glass, did she? That would be too much… </p>
<p>When we toured Union College with son #2 (I think it was Union) they called their dining services SAGA as well which scared us- ha ha.</p>
<p>Both of our kids have fond memories of ‘The Donuts’ (Greenwich mods). Hopefully your son has one of the renovated mods, as opposed to the older ones, which definitely need to be updated. Of course, our kids didn’t care.</p>
<p>Our daughter, Rachel F., did a Div III on, “The Necessity of Theatre in Education”. Right now, she is on the Slotting Committee, charged with placing submitted plays into time slots throughout the year. It seems like all the theater folks know each other, so our kids probably know each other. </p>
<p>We leave in about a week for Commencement!</p>
<p>I’ll have to ask my son which one he’s in - he’s really looking forward to it.</p>
<p>My son has the distinction of being the only deaf kid at Hampshire - he (like his brother, actually) listens and speaks thanks to bilateral cochlear implants. I’m sure they know each other. The world is small. </p>
<p>Enjoy commencement. I’m sure it’s very bittersweet.</p>
<p>Congrats ALF on commencement! You were such a fount of wisdom two years ago when my D decided on Hampshire; it was clear you appreciate the school’s special attributes.</p>
<p>I heard they were renaming SAGA after Rose(?) a long time (35 years or so) worker in Hampshire’s dining hall. My D was delighted to hear it- and that Sodexho was going away. She had a real problem with the preservatives and lack of whole, simple protein her first year and so was able to wangle a mod for her second year (but then got an off campus apartment this past semester and is in heaven).</p>
<p>kinderny - is Rose the woman who “polices” at the front of the cafe? My son said she’s amazing - she knows everyone by name. (and pointed out that he’s the only “Hugh” at Hampshire - although that’s not what he goes by) Wonderful woman!</p>
<p>My son has a problem with the food at Saga too. I’m glad they’re changing.</p>
<p>Yes- I am not sure her name is Rose but she is the person at the front desk where the students swipe in. My D said she is great, too.</p>
<p>I will say the staff at SAGA tried to be accomodating but would say things like “this rice has butter on it” (not a soy based margarine) but would be wrong because the school (rightfully so) caters a fair bit to the 60%(?) or so vegetarians/vegans. This caused tremendous problems for D and a lot of her food allergy cohort. She also found the offerings for carnivores to be…lacking in preparation expertise (meat like leather) and taste.</p>
<p>Same thing that my son said. He’s pretty psyched that he’ll be doing mostly his own food. He doesn’t have allergies but has a fussy system - SAGA didn’t help that at all.</p>
<p>Roberta Tudryn is the woman who has staffed the front desk at the Dining Commons, apparently since Hampshire started. According to our kids, she does indeed know everyone, which comes in handy when students forget/lose their ID card. There is a movement to change the nickname from SAGA to Roberta’s, but so far this effort has met with limited results. </p>
<p>Our daughter was happy to avoid the Dining Commons, as she ended up eating too many carbs, with the expected results. </p>
<p>Thanks for the compliment. I have so enjoyed experiencing Hampshire vicariously over the last 7 years, even though it is not my (inside-the-box, linear thinker) kind of place.</p>
<p>Is the food really that bad in SAGA? I’ll be spending at least my first semester in a dorm, and I’m a lactose-intolerant vegetarian, but I figured that I would be able to easily convert to a full-vegan diet at Hampshire.
I, however, have been on my own for the past five years and thus have become a fairly accomplished chef-- I was interested in the stir-fry stations. Could anyone tell me more about the inner workings of the SAGA dining halls? Any pictures I can look at or anything?</p>
<p>Here is a photo of the Dining Commons (a/k/a ‘SAGA’):
<a href=“http://farm1.staticflickr.com/56/113030056_824b795738_z.jpg?zz=1[/url]”>http://farm1.staticflickr.com/56/113030056_824b795738_z.jpg?zz=1</a></p>
![http://farm1.staticflickr.com/56/113030056_824b795738_z.jpg?zz=1[/url]](http://farm1.staticflickr.com/56/113030056_824b795738_z.jpg?zz=1%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>Here is a photo I took of the outside of the Dining Commons:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vibe/hampshire-college/?entry=image_0_rd38h5p1[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vibe/hampshire-college/?entry=image_0_rd38h5p1</a></p>
<p>I have eaten in the Dining Commons on several occasions, and I thought it was just fine. I think that any college food service gets old really fast unless they have a wide variety of choices or change up the menu on a regular basis. So, probably a food service that seems fine to visitors is not nearly as satisfactory for daily users. The stir-fry stations were good, but over time they got pretty messy, and one commonly had to wait in line to use a station. I thought that I would try it once, but I became impatient with the student cooking in front of me, as she added a sprig of this and a pinch of that, tasted it, frowned, and started adding other bits.</p>
<p>Hampshire’s new President, Jonathan Lash, is a former environmental attorney who pledged to make the college greener. Changing the food service from Sodexo to Bon Appetit is probably part of that effort. In any event, the food service will apparently be quite different, starting this Fall, so any previous experiences are not going to be representative of what you will encounter.</p>
<p>I think converting to vegan (with lactose intolerance)you are likely to be fine- as long as you don’t have other food allergies complicating this issue like gluten or soy. The latter two seem to be particularly troublesome as SAGA tried to meet the needs of vegetarians/vegans using products that are commonly contaminated with wheat and soy (like soy margarine or a spray used on the grill).</p>
<p>But I agree it is a whole new ball game come this fall anyway. Good luck.</p>
<p>Just home from picking up son #1 from Hampshire (well, at least we have his <em>stuff</em> - he’s in Philly with his GF). I love that place. It’s so pretty right now - green and everything’s blooming. The kids do seem pretty psyched about the changes in the food service.</p>
<p>The following is from [Educating</a> for Change » Redefining College Dining: Hampshire College?s Food Plan for the Future](<a href=“http://sites.hampshire.edu/educatingforchange/2013/06/19/redefining-college-dining-hampshire-colleges-food-plan-for-the-future/]Educating”>http://sites.hampshire.edu/educatingforchange/2013/06/19/redefining-college-dining-hampshire-colleges-food-plan-for-the-future/)</p>
<p>When Hampshire College students return to campus this fall, they will be welcomed back to a totally changed approach to food on campus. Hampshire aims at nothing less than redefining what the college dining experience can be.</p>
<p>“We are questioning everything that is currently done and every practice that has become routine,” said President Jonathan Lash, who encouraged the College community to think big in approaching the Healthy Food Transition, as it’s known on campus. The “transition” involves changing how food on campus is produced, prepared, served, and consumed.</p>
<p>That means making “a strong commitment to offer the highest-quality, sustainably produced food of any North American campus,” asserts Howard Wein, a Hampshire graduate working in an advisory capacity on the transition. He owns the hospitality advisory and venture firm Howard Wein Hospitality.</p>
<p>Hampshire’s history and resources make possible such a bold assertion. The founding mission included experimenting with innovative teaching and learning models that other educational institutions might adopt. A pioneer in integrating agriculture into a liberal arts program, the Hampshire College Farm Center began in the 1970s as a learning laboratory created by professors.</p>