Students at Lena Dunham’s college offended by lack of fried chicken

[keith99]

Oberlin apparently requires their students to live on campus, which is not that uncommon for private colleges. I'm
stuck in the car and bored so I peeked at Oberlin's herd on Yik Yak out of curiosity to see if there were any posts about the article in the OP (there aren't) and saw this:
View attachment 167554




Meh. Students who Poe, Poe, Poe their boats aggressively up the stream make the "news" far more often than the other 97% of the student body on their campus.

When I attended OXY you had to either live in the Dorms or at home (parent's home) Freshman year, Sophomore year you could also live in a Fraternity or Sorority house. It wasn't until Junior year you could live off campus otherwise. That Freshman year part has not changed since then. The rest has fluctuated. When more people want to live on campus then the requirements get relaxed.

I vaguely remember that my Freshman year you could get credit back for meals served in a Fraternity house, the credit going directly to the Frat. Meal plans were also in flux. Previously it was all meals, but by my time one could have weekdays only, lunch and dinner only or a certain number total.

Not that it mattered too much, one huge attraction of a Fraternity was no meal plan required! Under $250 a quarter rent was another! Yes a quarter, not a month and that included active fees, so a few parties and a beer machine in the basement. I remember the beer machine because I was the one who rigged an old 10 cents a coke hard wired machine to only take quarters and become a quarter a beer dispenser.

 

[keith99]

Thinking of history and food I am moved to bring back one by a White guy in a White suit who does Fried Chicken:

Seasoned Greetings!

 

[Chesterton]

White guys in white suits matter.

P.S. I like Norm MacDonald.

 

[rambot]

True. The British invented Chicken Tikka Masala.

Ginger beef was invented in Calgary Alberta. That's the BEST Chinese food!

 

[keith99]

There is some dispute over where the hard shell taco was created. Most sources say the beaches of Southern California.

 

[Chesterton]

Ginger beef was invented in Calgary Alberta. That's the BEST Chinese food!

There is some dispute over where the hard shell taco was created. Most sources say the beaches of Southern California.

Well this thread could get terribly derailed, because I happen to know where the nacho was invented. Boring story even though it involves John Wayne.

 

[Ada Lovelace]

When I attended OXY you had to either live in the Dorms or at home (parent's home) Freshman year, Sophomore year you could also live in a Fraternity or Sorority house. It wasn't until Junior year you could live off campus otherwise. That Freshman year part has not changed since then. The rest has fluctuated. When more people want to live on campus then the requirements get relaxed.

I vaguely remember that my Freshman year you could get credit back for meals served in a Fraternity house, the credit going directly to the Frat. Meal plans were also in flux. Previously it was all meals, but by my time one could have weekdays only, lunch and dinner only or a certain number total.

Not that it mattered too much, one huge attraction of a Fraternity was no meal plan required! Under $250 a quarter rent was another! Yes a quarter, not a month and that included active fees, so a few parties and a beer machine in the basement. I remember the beer machine because I was the one who rigged an old 10 cents a coke hard wired machine to only take quarters and become a quarter a beer dispenser.

The incredibly low rent of $250 a quarter for housing at a SoCal college definitely highlights the significant time difference between then and now. I think my parents pay $2800 a quarter for my shoebox-sized dorm room. The cost is the same for Greek and themed housing. That doesn't include mandatory meal plans. It's slightly less expensive to live in a co-op house. We also have to live on campus our first year, even if we have sophomore standing. The majority of students live on campus all four years because the housing in Palo Alto is some of the highest in the country.

 

[keith99]

The incredibly low rent of $250 a quarter for housing at a SoCal college definitely highlights the significant time difference between then and now. I think my parents pay $2800 a quarter for my shoebox-sized dorm room. The cost is the same for Greek and themed housing. That doesn't include mandatory meal plans. It's slightly less expensive to live in a co-op house. We also have to live on campus our first year, even if we have sophomore standing. The majority of students live on campus all four years because the housing in Palo Alto is some of the highest in the country.

It definitely does, but even more it highlights a trend away from affordable housing. I remember the costs of active membership in the Fraternity the year a pledged because it was so startling.

Active dues $65 a quarter
Live in additional cost $100 a quarter.

One thing about the house, no maids, no nothing. It was like instant homeowner. Toilet broke we fixed it. Window got broken, we fixed it. Remodel? We did it. We hung doors, patched walls and everything else.

And because of that our housing was about 1/4th the cost.

The probably now forbidden hell week was actually more an exercise in pledges doing the spring cleaning than gratuitous harassment. I'm not sure how to class Irish relays. (I would expect you to excel in them considering your dance background).

 

[Sketcher]

http://nypost.com/2015/12/18/pc-students-at-lena-dunhams-college-offended-by-lack-of-fried-chicken/

I don't even. The college should just stop serving food to anyone and let them all starve. If only this was an Onion article, because it reads like one. Alas.

If the complainers are all immature, ultra-liberal, and of different backgrounds in terms of food, why are you surprised?

 

[PeaceByJesus]

http://nypost.com/2015/12/18/pc-students-at-lena-dunhams-college-offended-by-lack-of-fried-chicken/

I don't even. The college should just stop serving food to anyone and let them all starve. If only this was an Onion article, because it reads like one. Alas.

Students at an ultra-liberal Ohio college are in an uproar over the fried chicken, sushi and Vietnamese sandwiches served in the school cafeterias, complaining the dishes are “insensitive” and “culturally inappropriate.”

This peevish attitude has become epidemic in too much of so-called "higher" education, and the Atlantic magazine had a good, though lengthy, article on it, "The Coddling of the American Mind," containing the following quotes:

A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress..

In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,”..

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response.... -
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

 

[rambot]

This sounds like people using buzzwords instead of just complaining that the food is no good.

 

[keith99]

This sounds like people using buzzwords instead of just complaining that the food is no good.

That does not explain BLACK students complaining that FRIED CHICKEN isn't served often enough. I just can't keep from thinking that at least SOME of them have a sense of humor even more disturbing than mine. Well perhaps not more than mine so far, but when then also start complaining about the lack of watermelon...

 

[buzuxi02]

Many foods we think originate in one country actually do not. Chinese fare as served in the west is a prime example. Whether General Tso's chicken or Chopped Suey and alot more.
Penne Ala Vodka is not italian but american. And a Greek salad has lettuce yet an authentic Greek Salad does not come with lettuce.

 

[Ada Lovelace]

Many foods we think originate in one country actually do not. Chinese fare as served in the west is a prime example. Whether General Tso's chicken or Chopped Suey and alot more.
Penne Ala Vodka is not italian but american. And a Greek salad has lettuce yet an authentic Greek Salad does not come with lettuce.

Yep. I used to be surprised on trips abroad that what was served at local restaurants often did not resemble or taste like the food presented as "authentic cuisine" in the States, but now I expect the differences. It's also sort of amusing seeing how many other countries present food as being American when it actually isn't. There's this Old West themed saloon in Harbin, China with a menu that cracked me up. It was all "American style" food I'd never eaten in America. It was as strange to me as the "American style disposable man panties" that were in the checkout aisles of the Super Walmart there where normally candy and batteries are in stores.

A few years ago I read this book titled Shanghai Girls about two sisters who immigrate to America after the Battle of Shanghai, and are in arranged marriages with brothers in Los Angeles. Their husbands' family owns a little restaurant in China Town, and their father-in-law finds it dispiriting and irritating to have to bastardize Chinese food to appeal to the American customers. He resents them for wanting dishes like sweet and sour pork that he sees as childish and such a contrast to the traditional food he wants to serve but can't because there aren't enough people who order those dishes.

 

[JGG]

I don't know who Lena Dunham is, but why not just live off campus and then eat wherever you want? Don't pretend like you can't afford it. You're going to Oberlin.

Oberlin? This happened at Lena Dunham College. You're clearly thinking of the wrong school.

 

[RDKirk]

And what is with wanting fried Chicken by the black students. That isn't real soul food, it is Uncle Tom sellout food. Real soul food is chitlins and hog maws.

 

[RDKirk]

Many foods we think originate in one country actually do not. Chinese fare as served in the west is a prime example. Whether General Tso's chicken or Chopped Suey and alot more.
Penne Ala Vodka is not italian but american. And a Greek salad has lettuce yet an authentic Greek Salad does not come with lettuce.

Having been raised on science fiction like Robert Heinlein, a "future" in which food cultures result in "Chow Mein" pizza seem to me to be how it should be.

That's why I always wonder at how Star Trek TNG would have Star Fleet members with 20th century national accents. Sheesh, they marry aliens in Star Fleet. If anyone had abandoned regional earth accents by then, surely it would be anyone in Star Fleet (and let's not forget there had been a world nuclear war a few hundred years earlier).

 

[RDKirk]

The cafeteria should be careful not to claim anything is "authentic" or "traditional" and just serve food that is "ethnic-ish" like American Chinese restaurants do.

I agree, though, that beef in dish labeled "Hindu" is mucho bogus.

Notice what I did with that phrase "mucho bogus?" Food, language, works in both.

 

[JGG]

The cafeteria should be careful not to claim anything is "authentic" or "traditional" and just serve food that is "ethnic-ish" like American Chinese restaurants do.

I agree, though, that beef in dish labeled "Hindu" is mucho bogus.

It's true. When I went to Vietnam I dined in a restaurant serving "American-style Chinese food". Ironically, it was neither authentic Chinese food, nor authentic American Chinese food.

 

[keith99]

Yep. I used to be surprised on trips abroad that what was served at local restaurants often did not resemble or taste like the food presented as "authentic cuisine" in the States, but now I expect the differences. It's also sort of amusing seeing how many other countries present food as being American when it actually isn't. There's this Old West themed saloon in Harbin, China with a menu that cracked me up. It was all "American style" food I'd never eaten in America. It was as strange to me as the "American style disposable man panties" that were in the checkout aisles of the Super Walmart there where normally candy and batteries are in stores.

A few years ago I read this book titled Shanghai Girls about two sisters who immigrate to America after the Battle of Shanghai, and are in arranged marriages with brothers in Los Angeles. Their husbands' family owns a little restaurant in China Town, and their father-in-law finds it dispiriting and irritating to have to bastardize Chinese food to appeal to the American customers. He resents them for wanting dishes like sweet and sour pork that he sees as childish and such a contrast to the traditional food he wants to serve but can't because there aren't enough people who order those dishes.

One need not travel internationally to see food absurdity.

My first job out of grad school was working for a time sharing company and I ended up on a trip to Maryland because of a project for the Navy that was supported out of both Los Angeles and Bethesda. The marketing office took us out to lunch at a 'Mexican' restaurant. Of all the forms of Mexican food it came closest to Tex-Mex. But it was bland! Tasteless Tex-Mex! A double down on stupid as we traveled by jet, not wagon train, it wasn't like we were homesick and yearning for a touch of L.A. Fortunately the computers and the main offices were also in Bethesda and one of our party knew the crew in operations, the crazy people who kept the computers running, ran the backups and such (this was the dark ages when this was as much magic as science a lot of the time). They had taste, they took us to dinner at an all you can eat seafood place. Different prices for fish, shrimp, clams, crab and lobster. But it was all you could eat of what you selected and anything cheaper. Only thing that was not all you can was the beer, seems ABC took a dim view of all the beer you can drink.