Let Them Eat Lunch

There’s no such thing as a free lunch — but that shouldn’t stop us from trying.

Students’ skipping meals is a pervasive problem. As they rush between classes during the day, many of them have to forgo lunch. Recently, Harvard College Dean David J. Deming acknowledged this issue and discussed the idea of opening another Fly-By location.

However, that proposal is misguided. What we need is not more Fly-By locations, but more time. In this case, Harvard can actually give it to us. Specifically, the College should redesign its course schedule to accommodate a lunch break.

Other students have rightly called for this change in the abstract. Now that Harvard is considering solutions to the logjam of lunch lines, I hope it will see that time heals all wounds — and it can end our fast, too.

Hardworking and high-achieving students seem all too willing to sacrifice meals, sleep, and everything else to prioritize their courses and extracurriculars. Most of us have probably done it and seen our peers do so, too. I’m not saying this to blame students — the problem isn’t that students do it, but rather that they have to.

It’s also unclear whether opening another Fly-By location is financially viable, given that Harvard has been downsizing amid budget shortfalls. And unless the College hires more Harvard University Dining Services workers, now is not the time to ask even more of the current workers as they negotiate a new contract.

Besides, even if we could open a new site, it might not make the lunch lines any shorter. The addition of a new Fly-By location may encourage more students to snag a meal there, rather than trekking back to their dining halls — a concept known in urban design as induced demand.

Regardless, Fly-By is not necessarily a perfect substitute for a meal in a dining hall. There’s something to be said about the value of sitting down in the company of your peers, eating something freshly prepared, and maybe even socializing — rather than hastily grabbing and scarfing down another peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Unfortunately, the current schedule doesn’t allow for that. Classes run in 75-minute increments, staggered by 15 minutes between classes. If students have several classes in a row, those 15 minutes might be all they get for lunch.

Harvard should modify this arrangement slightly by adding another 15 or 30 minutes of passing time, pushing the noon class to 12:15 p.m. or 12:30 p.m. Given that many students don’t eat breakfast, this seems like the most logical time for lunch. All courses for the rest of the day would be offset by the same amount, still with a 15-minute passing time.

Adding a lunch time would have benefits beyond just making sure that students have enough time to eat. Students would gain a designated period of free time shared in common.

Under the current system, it’s a cliché at the College to say “let’s get lunch sometime” because sometime never comes. Students are too busy, and more dispositively, their schedules are incompatible. When you’re free at noon on Tuesday, I’m in Economics 1420: “American Economic Policy” (shout out to professor Jeffrey Liebman).

Creating a lunch period would guarantee that everyone has at least 30 minutes, five days a week, that they are mutually free.

Admittedly, this new schedule is not without its drawbacks. It could be inconvenient for evening courses, which would be pushed still later in the day. Classes starting at 4:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. would instead begin closer to 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Moreover, courses held in Allston, such as those at the Science and Engineering Complex, are already offset by 45 minutes relative to courses in Cambridge. Delaying the latest afternoon classes — which begin at 5:15 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. — by 15 or 30 minutes would push them uncomfortably far into the evening.

And besides, not every student will want to eat at noon each day. Some might prefer to eat at 1:30 p.m., or they may curate their courses to preserve a lunch break in their schedule without needing this intervention.

This solution is not perfect. But despite any disadvantages, I believe the majority of students would be better off with a guaranteed lunch break as compared to the status quo of sporadically skipping meals. Any trade-offs are simply a question of priorities. Do we value our classes above sustenance?

I don’t think we should have to choose. Let’s have our class and eat lunch, too.

Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Winthrop House.