Next year Frary Dining Hall will be closed. The kitchen and dining facilities will receive a much-needed renovation, and the finished facility should rival Malott Commons and Collins Dining Hall. While Pomona students will enjoy better facilities - and thus, theoretically, a better selection of food - for years to come, the improvement comes at great cost to next year's North Campus residents.

Part of Pomona's identity as a residential college is captured by its culture of dining. Ideas and memories are shared over meals. Meals are sometimes the only time of day when students break from schoolwork and activities to socialize. It is the only place where students of varied interests gather at the same time. If we spend our days learning from Pomona's professors, we spend meals learning from one another.

So too is the dining hall experience central to the Pomona College experience. What would life on North Campus be without a nightly gathering at Frary for snack? When Frary was closed last year after the salmonella poisonings, North Campus students missed nightly snack for a time. Next year, many students won't even know what they are missing.

As inevitable as periodic renovations are, several elements of the current plan to renovate Frary are troublesome. Or, more accurately, it is troublesome that little planning seems to have gone on at all. Currently, the administration does not know how it will feed next year's North Campus residents. A meeting is being held this Sunday to brainstorm on that very problem. But isn't the question of where it will feed its students one that an administration should address as soon as it realizes that its students will be without a place to eat? Surely a major renovation such as that of Frary was planned and financed before - well, this Sunday at 4 pm. To be fair, the administration will probably settle on a plan that will get its students fed. But what if a better solution could have been reached with more time for planning?

Beyond a resolution to plan further ahead in the future, the administration should commit to do whatever it can within reason to preserve North Campus dining culture. One implication of this commitment demands that the administration ask themselves: can the Frary renovation be completed in less than the year that has been allotted for it? Construction projects can often be finished ahead of schedule given the right incentives for the contractor. The Frary renovation is set to begin in May. Is it unreasonable to shoot for a January completion date instead of the current year-long plan?

That answer cannot be reached in this space. But it can certainly be stated that if the project can be completed with Frary closed for one semester instead of two, it ought to be, even if the consequence is greater cost. At the very least, the administration should re-evaluate the costs of Frary's lengthy closure. There are expenses, of course, associated with feeding students at another facility. But the greater costs are the lost moments of camaraderie that can only come from a common residential dining space.

And if the year-long closure of Frary is imminent, the responsibility of the administration is to mimic an environment of bonhomie as best as possible. Even if it costs a little bit more. In the end, what is gained by breaking bread together will be far more valuable and far more lasting than what money was lost.

Sincerely,

Alice Chung

Editor-in-Chief