When I initially toured Whitman during the summer of my senior year, I remember being taken aback by how good the food at Cleveland was. I had a bowl of poke and a couple of pieces of sushi from Global. The food bewildered me and I imagined how awesome it would be when I eventually went to Whitman and got to enjoy the cornucopia that is Cleveland every night. But in reality… that’s exactly what happened! There was never a time in my life when I looked forward to dinner more than freshman year. The pasta, sliders, pizza, salads and everything else were delicious. While the food wasn’t Michelin-Star quality, I garnered a special appreciation for its savor. As someone who cooked all my meals for most of my adolescence, the idea of having a vast selection of ready-to-eat food at my fingertips was a dream come true. To my surprise, I quickly learned that I was an outlier – most students I talked to treated Cleveland like a necessary evil instead of a privilege.

This disposition to hate Cleveland food always reminds me of the quote by Anton Ego at the end of “Ratatouille,” “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and themselves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.” This quote’s message, one I’m sure many Whitman students have heard, seems to blissfully whisk over our collective heads. This is no more obvious than in the case of Cleveland Commons. As the predominant place to spend flex dollars and the main source of food for first and second years, it is striking how much vitriol it gets. In virtually every space at Whitman, be it hanging out in the dorms, a lively conversation in Reid or on the hellscape that is YikYak, if you spend enough time around Whitman students, you are sure to hear some outrageous things about the food served on campus.

Often taking the form of inside jokes or unsubstantiated rumors about the deadly side effects of the food, Cleveland Commons is one of the student body’s central subjects of collective ridicule. Yet, despite the student body’s constant hum of disdain, a large percentage of us still decide to turn up every day at six and chow down. This leads to a dissonance in belief and behavior for many students. For example, if I actually thought there was a sizable chance that consuming the food in front of me would leave me toilet-stricken for a portion of the following day, I probably wouldn’t eat it. Yet many of the same students who exclaim the dangers of Cleveland Commons still choose to eat there.

Cleveland Commons seats around 500 people, and it’s safe to say that most of these seats are full during dinner time; it serves not only as a place to eat but as one of Whitman’s largest communal spaces.

When interviewed, Junior Aiden Tribolet talked about Cleveland’s atmosphere.

“… [Cleveland is] a very comfortable atmosphere… [with] different spots you can kind of orient yourself in, maybe move around to different spaces with different social groups, especially as a freshman and sophomore.”

If Cleveland is a center on campus for connection and community building, then why is it also such a lightning rod for ridicule?

To try and understand why so many people have such strong feelings towards Cleveland, I and fellow Wire Columnist Riley Cooper set out to interview students when Cleveland food would be at the forefront of their minds and the bottom of their stomachs – the dinner rush. We asked students about their own opinions on the food as well as what they heard around campus in general.

When interviewed, a lot of students gave very measured and reasonable critiques of Cleveland food.

When asked about the student body’s general perception towards the food, Sophomore Thayer Collins answered.

“I think it sustains life… I think the word people would describe it as is mid.” Mid seems to be a perfect description; the food at Cleveland Commons does everything it needs to – every night, it can feed hundreds of students while also being good enough to have students come back every night.

With the scale of people Cleveland has to feed, there are necessary restrictions that come with that: Sophomore Maleah Goree shared a similar sentiment when interviewed.

“I think sometimes they’re are less options than I’d like, but I think that is just simply impossible in one dining hall.” All the students we interviewed understood Cleveland’s limitations due to its need to feed so many people.

We both quickly realized that people were being exceptionally reasonable with their opinions of the food, which was refreshing to hear. Despite this, many students still recognized that they hear a lot of crazy things around campus when the subject of Cleveland Commons is brought up.

The question must then be asked: why do so many other students find it necessary to complain about Cleve? In her article “Complaints and Complaining: Functions, Antecedents, and Consequences,” Robin Kowalski analyzes some of the social reasons why we complain. For Kowalski, complaining is often a way for an individual to show social status and “the act of complaining itself may convey an air of superiority. By complaining, one expresses to others that one is dissatisfied… people may also complain about the characteristics of objects or people to… [show] they are discriminating in their tastes and choices.” Through Kowalski’s logic, one could distinguish themselves from the pack by being critical of the food. Complaining could allow the student to show that they ate food of a higher quality before coming to Whitman, or through criticism, it shows that an individual is in tune with campus culture.

This social phenomenon isn’t unique to Whitman; students across colleges and universities nationwide develop an almost ritualistic practice of critiquing their dining halls. Harvard’s Crimson regularly publishes articles bemoaning the state of their dining hall offerings, and it doesn’t take long to find Reddit forums filled with students sharing horror stories about their latest meal.

Even if complaining about a dining hall is a common and easily explained occurrence, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is without harm. Many students at Whitman don’t have other food options, or they lack a kitchen to make their own food. To someone in this situation, hearing others demean Cleveland food might feel like they’re putting themselves above you as someone who has to eat that food. For a student body often rightfully concerned with the implication and assumptions behind language, it seems like we sometimes have a collective blindspot in regards to Cleveland. While at first glance it appears that the process of making Cleveland food is much more industrial than artisanal, that doesn’t mean the chefs aren’t proud of what they serve. Imagine if you were a chef who makes the food in Cleveland every day, and you heard some of the conversions students have about your food.

I realized there was another side to this conversation. I wrote this article to address a behavior I already saw as a problem. When I heard people complain about Cleveland, I always maligned them as ungrateful or lacking enough self awareness to understand the level of privilege they displayed when critiquing our dining halls and our tirelessly dedicated staff.

However, my understanding of the why behind some of these complaints broadened when I was doing interviews at Cleveland. When asked why people complain about Cleveland, Maleah Goree talked about the importance of choice.

“I also think when a lot of things are out of your control, and your day-to-day life is looking at the new, small silly things like the food that we eat… We just want to complain [about] it cause it feels a little more controllable than the state of the world right now.”

Even if all the criticism isn’t entirely accurate or measured, or if sometimes we come across as ungrateful, it all feels like small potatoes compared to the world we now find ourselves living in. When it feels like the world is burning around us, maybe it’s ok to complain about orange chicken and tofu.

“Ratatouille” also claims that “anyone can cook.” I frankly disagree, cooking at any level requires both efficiency and precision, especially for chefs that must produce the volume of food that Cleveland Commons requires – a fact that is consistently overlooked by students. So, if you need an outlet, or if complaining makes you feel like you have reclaimed some small amount of control, just remember all that Cleveland Commons accomplishes.