I love to cook. I may not be chef Gordon Ramsay—although I do go on crazy tirades occasionally—but being a first-year student living in residence has often made me feel like yelling “This soup is dry!” at someone.
My concern is the limited cooking opportunities afforded to students living in residence. Only students living in suite-style dorms are really provided the right facilities for cooking.
I’ve realized the main reason most students graduate without the skills to feed themselves is that there aren’t many opportunities to learn.
Obviously, there are advantages—mainly for the university—for not providing full kitchen appliances to students. Allowing students to experiment with a skillet is basically an invitation to set the smoke alarm off 24/7, and the time and money spent on cleaning a communal kitchen would be horrendous.
Based on these assumptions, I understand completely why there are no ovens. Thanksgiving turkey disaster, anyone? By denying the majority of residence students in-res cooking facilities, the university is cleaning up a mess they never want to deal with.
However, I think even small changes are good changes. What if Carleton introduced on-campus cooking facilities?
The current Carleton Cooking Club holds all its sessions off-campus, in the homes of its members. Factor in a membership fee of $35 and all that travel time, and you lose the majority of in-res students.
Personally, I don’t see how a chemistry lab and a chef’s station are all that different. Whether you’re mixing sodium chloride with H2O to create a saline solution or to boil pasta, the end result is generally a compound. Whether it’s edible or not is completely up to you.
If we have room for all the other amazing facilities here on campus, is it so hard to imagine a couple of working kitchens thrown into the mix?
Even with all the challenges cooking-savvy residence students face, I have to hand it to the rebels. They are the few who have the motivation to grill pancakes in the bathroom, or make stir-frys beneath carefully covered smoke alarms.
All students want is the chance to learn to make our own food, and without a place to practice, that’s not likely to happen.
