Brown bag ethics

Last week, Colgate’s SGA sent out what I thought was going to be my holy grail: The Free Food Calendar. According to the SGA, this new initiative will be released monthly and lists events with times and location to keep people informed about free meal opportunities because, as the SGA puts it, "Just because your wallet is feeling thin doesn’t mean you have to be!"

But the Free Food Calendar was surprisingly sparse, considering how many catered events happen at this school. I’m not as hardcore as some of my friends, who bring Tupperware to brown bag lunches, but I have a pretty good routine for eating cheaply at Colgate.

The biggest gap in the Free Food Calendar is a listing of departmental Brown Bags. Everyone knows this is the easiest and most reliable way to get your fill during the free period. I highly recommend the Middle Eastern Studies Brown Bags, which serve delicious hummus, pita and falafel. However, if you don’t have a background in these studies, the conversations can be a little confusing. The brown bag I attended with the former US Ambassador to Egypt and Israel was interesting to the PoliSci majors in the room, but I barely understood a thing. It made me feel a little guilty for being so uninformed, but the falafel was amazing!  I'm much better prepared to understand the talks for the Geology department, naturally.

But my favorite brown bag opportunity is every Tuesday in the Women’s Studies Lounge. Being a woman, I can always count on the topic of conversation being both interesting and pertinent to me. These brown bags are usually more casual than a strictly intellectual talk, often featuring students or faculty members who share personal experiences. My favorite was the Coming Out Stories brown bag cohosted by LGBTQ Studies, where I got to hear some of my friends and even my old boss tell their stories of coming out in the Colgate community. It was powerful stuff, and the food was delicious! Women’s Studies brown bags let you make your own sandwiches with deli meats, cheese, tomatoes and lettuce. They also have Curtain Call brownies, which alone make the trip worth it.

Apart from brown bags, I also attend the weekly LGBTQ Family Dinner at Frank and the French department’s Table of Babel, plus any religious or cultural events, like Muslim Student Association’s yearly Eid dinner, which I enjoy because they always provide some sort of cultural performance (this year a band played Sufi music!)…and there was delicious falafel.

So SGA’s new initiative is a bit lacking, in my opinion. The calendar has gaping holes – but I’m not complaining. I’m not even sure this calendar was a good idea. The SGA gives this disclaimer, which I think is an important point:

“We hope that you enjoy this resource, and only ask that if you choose to attend an event that provides food, you stay for the entirety of the event as well.”

But by making a calendar specifically based on free food, isn’t the SGA kind of contradicting themselves? These events are defined first as offering free food, and only secondarily by the actual purpose of the event, which isn’t always evident from the brief titles. Here’s where personal judgment comes in: How far will you go just to get free food? How much of your interest in an event is based on its content, and how much on its lunch spread? I’m currently trying to find a balance: attending events that I’m honestly interested in, and seeing the provided meal as an added bonus. It’s just hard to keep focus when everyone puts so much emphasis on the free food aspect.