What sets Bates’ food practices apart?

What are the salient distinctions in Bates’ approach to food?

President Hansen: That’s a big question. There are very good reasons that we don’t outsource our dining services, and that food is not a trivial part of the way we are, and aim to be, a community.

What’s really special at Bates is the commitment of the Dining Services staff, from the top down and the bottom up, to serving the educational mission and to providing healthy, responsible food choices for students.

In many ways, Christine Schwartz and her staff think of this as a family that they’re feeding. It’s a miracle, I think, that Dining Services is able to feed 1,700 students 4,000 meals a day and still have this sense of intimacy and the connection that they make through the buying of the food, the preparing of the food, the planning of the menus, the serving of the food, and then the recycling at the other end.

— From an August 2008 conversation with President Elaine Tuttle Hansen