When you are touring Saint A’s, it’s the little things that get ya. Hearing about the gingerbread contest, the pub mugs, or how the dining hall in Dave matches the monastery’s makes the college more than just a place to live and learn. It becomes somewhere endearing, with a character and charm that is unmatched by any other. I understand that change is an important and oftentimes necessary phenomenon required to stay relevant and in the loop with the rapid pace of the world. However, some changes are simply unnecessary, especially at a school that prides itself on its traditional college look and feel and markets itself on the small things that make it unique. 

As a senior, the change in dining has been an adjustment to say the least. There are some obvious pros and cons to the dining change, however I’m mostly just thankful our staff was able to stay onboard amidst the change in vendors. While I am not the biggest fan of change, I can certainly, and begrudgingly, take it. However, I do draw the line at any attempts to change the small pieces of character at the college. Currently in Dave, there are vision boards, or planning boards (or whatever you may call them), that outline the way the dining hall is going to be renovated. While it looks like the majority of changes will be to the servery area of the dining hall, myself and many other students are fearful that these changes will take a step farther and be made to the main dining hall itself.

I have heard some talk that it may be left alone, or that just the tables and chairs will be updated.  However any major change to the main portion of the dining hall effectively destroys one of the college’s most endearing features, which is that the dining hall matches the dining room in the monastery. In fact, this detail factored into why many of us chose to attend Saint A’s. Every night when the students and the monastic community sit down for dinner, we are doing so in the same room, even though they are almost a mile apart. The tables and chairs and windows all match, so that every day every member of Saint Anselm College sits down for a meal together, as a community and as a family. This is not just a small little detail of a dining hall, rather it is a physical manifestation of the core of Saint A’s, because at our core, we are all a community and a family; and families eat together. To change this detail of college life, to change our community’s togetherness, Saint A’s would lose a major part of itself. While the tables in the dining hall may not seem like the most important thing, they help connect the entire school community. To change them would be to change Saint A’s.