Photo Courtesy of Rosemary Geib ‘23
By Cynthia Akanaga ’25
Staff Writer
Mount Holyoke students have access to a dining hall with an array of food options, ranging between the Halal, Kosher, Global, Classics and Made to Order stations. There are many options to cater to students’ dietary needs. However, some first-year international students reported having a hard time adjusting to the food in the Dining Commons.
Students react to dining options
Living 13,219 kilometers from home, Ramisa Tahsin Rahman ’25, an international student from Bangladesh, recalled how she longs for home-cooked meals due to the “lack of spices” in the food in Blanchard. Being Muslim, she is limited to the food at the Halal station. According to Rahman, this station often has a limited variety of meal options and a tendency to run out of food, leaving her dependent on “french fries and buns” to combat hunger.
There is a recipe box located in Blanchard which allows students to input suggestions regarding recipes and meals that they want to see made in the dining hall. However, so far, Rahman said, “I don’t think it’s helpful, because a lot of my friends have dropped recipes in there and I haven’t seen any of them actually being made.” In terms of feeling more represented, Rahman is resigned to the fact that “since I’m the minority here, I feel like I cannot complain with what I’m getting, so I have to simply adapt.”
Ruby Sapkota ’25, a student from Nepal, shares Rahman’s sentiment, saying that “Back home, we have spices, but after coming here, I see that everything is raw and even the cooked things do not have spices.” Being Hindu, Sapkota cannot eat pork, beef and raw vegetables. For the first couple of weeks on campus, she said that she and her friend cried because they were so hungry and could not eat the food. “I eat in Blanch just to survive,” she said. The lack of meal diversity also affects Sapkota’s food intake. She said she has not eaten vegetables since moving to campus. “I do not eat raw vegetables, and even when they make cooked vegetables, they mix it with beef or pork, which I cannot eat,” Sapkota said.
Diamond Abiakalam ’25, a student from Nigeria, stated, “Africa is not represented at all” in the dining hall. According to Abiakalam, when she shares her opinion with other students, “many retort that the food in MHC is better than other colleges and [she] should be grateful.” Abiakalam continued, “This is insensitive and invalidates my experience as an international student. I wasn’t raised with food like this and I shouldn’t be expected to swallow my complaints simply because it’s better than food somewhere else.”
Abiakalam continued, stating, “African students are also part of the school, so they should be represented in all areas including in the dining selection”
Students offer solutions
Rahman thought that if the College was to “hire someone Asian who knows Asian taste buds, the food can taste more closely to the food back home and make me and a lot of my Asian friends feel more at home in the College”
Sapokta’s solution was more specific. “I think Blanchard should really make cooked, spiced vegetables more because many Hindu students cannot eat raw vegetables or plainly boiled vegetables,” she said. “So, spiced vegetables would be better for us.” But she echoed Rahman’s point as well, saying, “Though the dining workers try to replicate food for my ethnic group, it doesn’t taste the same. Maybe hiring a South Asian person would be a good idea.”
Lastly, Abiakalam called for “a representation of Africans in the food selection and a more diverse staff that is actually aware of how flavorful these ethnic meals are supposed to taste like.”
Mount Holyoke has developed an anti-racism action plan since August 2020, stating the College’s commitment “to becoming an anti-racist community” This plan promised to tackle broad issues faced by students of color, including expanding diversity in curricula and faculty at the College. However, no statements have been made regarding how these changes might impact or diversify Blanchard’s offerings.