Harvardfail
Jul. 2nd, 2011 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraIn which Harvard University utterly fails to do anything like feed me or provide a way for me to feed myself.
I have been in the Boston area for about a month now, this summer, doing materials science research at Harvard University. I've learned a lot so far! I've learned how to use a scientific freeze-dryer (and gone up and down on elevators every half an hour to check on the latest iteration of on-going project almost every day last week), I've been trained on scanning electron microscopes, I've stretched elastomers and stamped nanowires and done image analysis. I have also learned that I am pretty sure I do not want to do a science or engineering PhD, which is useful to know. It's interesting work, but not my passion.
Other thing I have learned? Not to trust big universities with knowing about food allergies or how to treat people with them.
I should know this. I have run into it before, and with another Ivy League: when I went to Explo at Yale after my freshman year of high school, my mother stayed in the area (note that we are from Minnesota, though we do have relatives in the area) and made food which waited frozen for me in the dining hall.
This time, it all started off well enough. When I got the offer of a place in the SEAS REU program, I emailed and played phone tag with the REU coordinator until they told me, Yes. You will have access to a kitchen. (At first they suggested that really, there were plenty of restaurants around which had experience with allergies. I kindly waited until I had stopped laughing hysterically to email back after that one. My impression all along has been that they are extremely kind and well-intentioned people who just have no idea.)
The options I heard from them were: 1) We will put you in housing at Lesley University (which is basically houses), or if that doesn’t work out 2) It turns out there is a kitchen in the dorm where all the REU students are housed, the REU students just do not generally have access to it. Both of which sounded pretty good. I then didn't hear anything until right before I was going to leave, when I called/emailed furiously to say, "Okay, so which of these is it, guys?" It was the second option--they had a kitchen--there would be a key waiting for me with the res life people when I checked in. Okay. Good!
Except not: the key was not waiting for me, and the res life people had no idea. They told me to go talk to the building manager, which I did. The building manager told me that they'd figured out that a bunch of people not the REU students were using the kitchen, so they were going to find a different kitchen for me, one that I could have to myself (or with very few other people having access).
…less awesome. Okay? They could let me into the kitchen just to cook dinner, but the REU was hosting a barbeque where I was hopeful there'd be things I could eat and I was tired from moving. No thanks, not tonight. (There was food I could eat at the barbeque. While there are many other things that have gone wrong with my food this summer, that was an excellent experience. I think it was the Harvard catering people? They had plain beef patties, and some salad greens, that I could eat.)
During this, I was shown a kitchen, presumably the one I could have access to. It was across the street from my dorm; when I was being shown it, it was in use by someone cooking a big pot of pasta. There did not seem to be much ventilation, and the kitchen space itself was tiny and dirty in only the way that generations of college students unconcerned with flying grease can make a place.
I got confused impressions of who precisely had access to the space and how they got it (as far as I can tell, the proctors--recent Harvard grads? upperclassmen? functioning in an S.A./R.A. capability--who had to sign up for time and get the key from the building guard), how I would have access to the space (possibly I would have had my own key, but would that have done me much good if there was a separate schedule happening with other people?).
I did get, clearly, the implication from the REU coordinators that they were looking into other options--spaces I would have to myself or that had controlled access, et cetera.
The next morning, they had breakfast set up for the REU students! Except--um--no one had told the person in charge of the general food-for-REU that they had a student with allergies. Or something? Now they're doing better on that, though I still very much doubt that the REU food person has any training on allergies at all.
No progress on finding me a kitchen by the end of the first week--they kept saying "oh there are these other ones we're checking on" and then nothing happened--and the evening that I didn't go a half-hour/45 minutes to Kate's house for dinner and back again afterward (thus getting me into bed late), I ate canned chicken on rice crackers plus baby carrots for dinner.
Somewhere in here was when I started thinking along the lines of "Thank God I know people in the area". I also finally got a dorm-fridge/microwave, which isn’t much but was way better than what I had before (nothing), and the REU people asked dining services if I could be on the meal plan--they were very confident I could. The REU people told me the meal plan would start on the 19th, so it would just be one more week, could I do that?
Beginning the next week, a high school intern joined the research group. I asked where he was living. He said Lesley University housing.
Um.
So that was the second week. I got news, halfway through it, that the dining services people thought I could be on the meal plan. Yay!
The meal plan would not start until the 25th.
Um.
Keep in mind that most of my dinners, in this period, consisted of rice made in the microwave, frozen broccoli or baby carrots, and either beans from a can or the one brand of frozen chicken nuggets that only has an ingredient to which I have a sensitivity, not a life-threatening allergy.
On Thursday I finally got contacted by the dining people themselves--I had put my foot down about needing to talk to them before these grand plans proceeded. I talked to the manager of Annenberg dining hall; she told me a bunch of reassuring things about how they'd dealt with students who had food allergies. They had only had one allergic reaction in the past year, she said, and it was a student who was allergic to cashews but ate something (labeled as containing cashews) accidentally.
The scale of the operations troubled me, though--two thousand students?--and I didn't want to spend another week hanging around on campus being stressed and ill-fed on the off-chance that they could feed me, so that weekend I took Kate's family up on their ridiculously kind offer and moved all of my stuff to the spare room in their attic.
That Tuesday--just over two weeks since I had arrived in Boston--I met with the dining staff of Annenberg. They gave me the grand tour of the place, introduced me to the staff with the fact that I'd be eating there this summer taken as a given, showed me a place where I could have part of a shelf to myself in the fridge, showed me a place where I could have my own refrigerator--with a lock--and a little propane burner to cook on, if I wanted.
As we were going out, they asked if I had any other questions or concerns. I said, Well… I thought it was awesome that they had all this I could use, but I'd have to go through the big kitchen to use it, and things like a lot of wheat flour being poured, or a lot of eggs being fried, might trigger my inhaled allergies and give me asthma.
This was very clearly not something they had anticipated.
They asked a few questions--how much exposure?--and I told them that sometimes the milk frothing in a coffee shop is enough. The manager, who had talked with me for half an hour on the phone the week before and told me how good they were about allergies, gave a little laugh. "Well, we don't make lattes here!"
Two days later I got an email from the manager saying that "Due to a recent increase in number of summer school students" they would "not be able to accommodate [my] request for a meal plan in Annenberg this summer". She hoped that I could find a kitchen. It closed, "All the best".
I was very, very glad that I had had somewhere else to go.
The REU people talked fitfully of another place where I could have counter space and a hotplate--which did not pan out. Or they could put one of the team members on finding an apartment for me--which, a few days later, because "Well, if you have some free time in your work day and find something on Craigslist, let us know and we'll fund it for you".
I remain very, very glad that I had somewhere else to go.
tl;dr:
1. Harvard very obviously does not train their staff members working in event planning to deal with allergies. The REU event coordinator/food planner has been working at Harvard for some time, in a couple of different areas, and does not seem to have received training in this area.
2. They must not have a clear way for programs on campus to get information about what the options available to students with allergies are. I understand if not every program on campus can be trained to deal with every eventuality--but if you are not going to train them on at least the likely ones, you ought to have some system set up so that they know who to talk to.
2a. I am left to speculate on whether they receive disability-accommodations training at all.
2b. I am left to wonder why they did not look into any of this before they told me I could have a kitchen, or before I arrived.
3. The Harvard dining services told me repeatedly that they were certain they could feed me… until I mentioned the possibility of me having asthma from inhaled allergens in the kitchen. They then told me, under cover of an excuse, that they were "not...able to accommodate [my] request" for a meal plan.
3a. This sounds extremely like "you would be too much of a liability and we don't want the bad publicity".
4. All of this took approximately a month, during which--if I hadn't had somewhere else to go--I would have been working with a dorm-sized fridge, a microwave, and a tiny, dirty kitchen which was open to a nebulous group of people to which I did not belong and with whom I had no contact. And nothing else.
Speaking of bad publicity for Harvard, how about signal-boosting/linking this? If nothing else, I'd like other people with allergies/asthma who are looking at colleges or undergraduate research programs to know what they might be getting into. Yes, maybe I was too trusting at first; yes, maybe I should have been more clear in my requests, or asked more questions... but that does not excuse what happened. Not at all.
I have been in the Boston area for about a month now, this summer, doing materials science research at Harvard University. I've learned a lot so far! I've learned how to use a scientific freeze-dryer (and gone up and down on elevators every half an hour to check on the latest iteration of on-going project almost every day last week), I've been trained on scanning electron microscopes, I've stretched elastomers and stamped nanowires and done image analysis. I have also learned that I am pretty sure I do not want to do a science or engineering PhD, which is useful to know. It's interesting work, but not my passion.
Other thing I have learned? Not to trust big universities with knowing about food allergies or how to treat people with them.
I should know this. I have run into it before, and with another Ivy League: when I went to Explo at Yale after my freshman year of high school, my mother stayed in the area (note that we are from Minnesota, though we do have relatives in the area) and made food which waited frozen for me in the dining hall.
This time, it all started off well enough. When I got the offer of a place in the SEAS REU program, I emailed and played phone tag with the REU coordinator until they told me, Yes. You will have access to a kitchen. (At first they suggested that really, there were plenty of restaurants around which had experience with allergies. I kindly waited until I had stopped laughing hysterically to email back after that one. My impression all along has been that they are extremely kind and well-intentioned people who just have no idea.)
The options I heard from them were: 1) We will put you in housing at Lesley University (which is basically houses), or if that doesn’t work out 2) It turns out there is a kitchen in the dorm where all the REU students are housed, the REU students just do not generally have access to it. Both of which sounded pretty good. I then didn't hear anything until right before I was going to leave, when I called/emailed furiously to say, "Okay, so which of these is it, guys?" It was the second option--they had a kitchen--there would be a key waiting for me with the res life people when I checked in. Okay. Good!
Except not: the key was not waiting for me, and the res life people had no idea. They told me to go talk to the building manager, which I did. The building manager told me that they'd figured out that a bunch of people not the REU students were using the kitchen, so they were going to find a different kitchen for me, one that I could have to myself (or with very few other people having access).
…less awesome. Okay? They could let me into the kitchen just to cook dinner, but the REU was hosting a barbeque where I was hopeful there'd be things I could eat and I was tired from moving. No thanks, not tonight. (There was food I could eat at the barbeque. While there are many other things that have gone wrong with my food this summer, that was an excellent experience. I think it was the Harvard catering people? They had plain beef patties, and some salad greens, that I could eat.)
During this, I was shown a kitchen, presumably the one I could have access to. It was across the street from my dorm; when I was being shown it, it was in use by someone cooking a big pot of pasta. There did not seem to be much ventilation, and the kitchen space itself was tiny and dirty in only the way that generations of college students unconcerned with flying grease can make a place.
I got confused impressions of who precisely had access to the space and how they got it (as far as I can tell, the proctors--recent Harvard grads? upperclassmen? functioning in an S.A./R.A. capability--who had to sign up for time and get the key from the building guard), how I would have access to the space (possibly I would have had my own key, but would that have done me much good if there was a separate schedule happening with other people?).
I did get, clearly, the implication from the REU coordinators that they were looking into other options--spaces I would have to myself or that had controlled access, et cetera.
The next morning, they had breakfast set up for the REU students! Except--um--no one had told the person in charge of the general food-for-REU that they had a student with allergies. Or something? Now they're doing better on that, though I still very much doubt that the REU food person has any training on allergies at all.
No progress on finding me a kitchen by the end of the first week--they kept saying "oh there are these other ones we're checking on" and then nothing happened--and the evening that I didn't go a half-hour/45 minutes to Kate's house for dinner and back again afterward (thus getting me into bed late), I ate canned chicken on rice crackers plus baby carrots for dinner.
Somewhere in here was when I started thinking along the lines of "Thank God I know people in the area". I also finally got a dorm-fridge/microwave, which isn’t much but was way better than what I had before (nothing), and the REU people asked dining services if I could be on the meal plan--they were very confident I could. The REU people told me the meal plan would start on the 19th, so it would just be one more week, could I do that?
Beginning the next week, a high school intern joined the research group. I asked where he was living. He said Lesley University housing.
Um.
So that was the second week. I got news, halfway through it, that the dining services people thought I could be on the meal plan. Yay!
The meal plan would not start until the 25th.
Um.
Keep in mind that most of my dinners, in this period, consisted of rice made in the microwave, frozen broccoli or baby carrots, and either beans from a can or the one brand of frozen chicken nuggets that only has an ingredient to which I have a sensitivity, not a life-threatening allergy.
On Thursday I finally got contacted by the dining people themselves--I had put my foot down about needing to talk to them before these grand plans proceeded. I talked to the manager of Annenberg dining hall; she told me a bunch of reassuring things about how they'd dealt with students who had food allergies. They had only had one allergic reaction in the past year, she said, and it was a student who was allergic to cashews but ate something (labeled as containing cashews) accidentally.
The scale of the operations troubled me, though--two thousand students?--and I didn't want to spend another week hanging around on campus being stressed and ill-fed on the off-chance that they could feed me, so that weekend I took Kate's family up on their ridiculously kind offer and moved all of my stuff to the spare room in their attic.
That Tuesday--just over two weeks since I had arrived in Boston--I met with the dining staff of Annenberg. They gave me the grand tour of the place, introduced me to the staff with the fact that I'd be eating there this summer taken as a given, showed me a place where I could have part of a shelf to myself in the fridge, showed me a place where I could have my own refrigerator--with a lock--and a little propane burner to cook on, if I wanted.
As we were going out, they asked if I had any other questions or concerns. I said, Well… I thought it was awesome that they had all this I could use, but I'd have to go through the big kitchen to use it, and things like a lot of wheat flour being poured, or a lot of eggs being fried, might trigger my inhaled allergies and give me asthma.
This was very clearly not something they had anticipated.
They asked a few questions--how much exposure?--and I told them that sometimes the milk frothing in a coffee shop is enough. The manager, who had talked with me for half an hour on the phone the week before and told me how good they were about allergies, gave a little laugh. "Well, we don't make lattes here!"
Two days later I got an email from the manager saying that "Due to a recent increase in number of summer school students" they would "not be able to accommodate [my] request for a meal plan in Annenberg this summer". She hoped that I could find a kitchen. It closed, "All the best".
I was very, very glad that I had had somewhere else to go.
The REU people talked fitfully of another place where I could have counter space and a hotplate--which did not pan out. Or they could put one of the team members on finding an apartment for me--which, a few days later, because "Well, if you have some free time in your work day and find something on Craigslist, let us know and we'll fund it for you".
I remain very, very glad that I had somewhere else to go.
tl;dr:
1. Harvard very obviously does not train their staff members working in event planning to deal with allergies. The REU event coordinator/food planner has been working at Harvard for some time, in a couple of different areas, and does not seem to have received training in this area.
2. They must not have a clear way for programs on campus to get information about what the options available to students with allergies are. I understand if not every program on campus can be trained to deal with every eventuality--but if you are not going to train them on at least the likely ones, you ought to have some system set up so that they know who to talk to.
2a. I am left to speculate on whether they receive disability-accommodations training at all.
2b. I am left to wonder why they did not look into any of this before they told me I could have a kitchen, or before I arrived.
3. The Harvard dining services told me repeatedly that they were certain they could feed me… until I mentioned the possibility of me having asthma from inhaled allergens in the kitchen. They then told me, under cover of an excuse, that they were "not...able to accommodate [my] request" for a meal plan.
3a. This sounds extremely like "you would be too much of a liability and we don't want the bad publicity".
4. All of this took approximately a month, during which--if I hadn't had somewhere else to go--I would have been working with a dorm-sized fridge, a microwave, and a tiny, dirty kitchen which was open to a nebulous group of people to which I did not belong and with whom I had no contact. And nothing else.
Speaking of bad publicity for Harvard, how about signal-boosting/linking this? If nothing else, I'd like other people with allergies/asthma who are looking at colleges or undergraduate research programs to know what they might be getting into. Yes, maybe I was too trusting at first; yes, maybe I should have been more clear in my requests, or asked more questions... but that does not excuse what happened. Not at all.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 02:45 am (UTC)