[snca-list] Fwd: [aalstaff] Re: New Exhibition in NCC Gallery

[Jason E. Tomberlin]

Dear SNCA members:

Please see the notice below concerning an exhibit at the North Carolina 
Collection Gallery.  The exhibit will be up during SNCA's Spring 2004 
meeting at Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

The North Carolina Collection Gallery will be a part of Friday's tours, 
but you may want to spend a little extra time during breaks/lunch for 
this exhibit.

Jason Tomberlin, SNCA VP and Program Chair

                     "THE STUDENT'S PLATE:
 Food & Dining at the University of North Carolina Since 1795"
              North Carolina Collection Gallery
               Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill


"The meat generally stinks and has maggots in it."  This unsavory 
comment 
was made in a letter written jointly by John and Ebenezer Pettigrew to 
their father in 1795.  The brothers were not soldiers fighting on some 
distant battlefront or prisoners suffering in a dingy jail cell; they 
were 
students at the University of North Carolina.  At that time, the newly 
established school consisted of three small buildings nestled in the 
woods 
near "New Hope Chapel."  One of those structures was a wooden, two-
story 
dining hall where early students often endured meals of hard biscuits, 
weak 
tea, clotted milk, and meager cuts of greasy pork or beef.

By the late 1800s, food service at UNC had improved dramatically, 
although 
a significant number of students in Chapel Hill still continued to 
furnish 
or make arrangements for their own meals.  On occasion they even 
captured a 
special dish to supplement their diets.  For example, in another letter 
written by a student in 1897, the enterprising fellow describes 
inviting 
classmates to his room one evening to enjoy a supper or "grub-rush" of 
roasted opossum. Sixteen years later, in 1913, UNC officials opened 
Swain 
Hall in an effort to satisfy the appetite of the school's growing 
enrollment.  With a seating capacity for 460 students, the new brick 
building served as UNC's main dining hall or commons for the next 
quarter 
century.  Swain Hall was named in memory of one of the university's 
past 
presidents, but students soon nicknamed the building "Swine Hall."

A new exhibition in the North Carolina Collection Gallery examines 
these 
accounts and others relating to the history of food and dining at UNC 
since 
1795.  Through the use of documents, books, lithographs, and 
photographs, 
"The Student's Plate" reviews that history from the previously 
described 
Spartan fare of the school's first students to late nineteenth-century 
eating clubs and today's assortment of cafeterias, cafes, and snack 
bars. 
"The Student's Plate" also addresses how complaints about food appear 
to be 
a tradition common to many colleges and universities.  Yet, if students 
from generations ago could see the abundance, diversity, cleanliness, 
and 
convenience of meals now available on campuses, they would no doubt be 
astounded. "An army," French emperor Napoleon once observed, "marches 
on 
its stomach." That maxim, in a sense, has also applied to the legions 
of 
students who have marched to class at UNC over the past 209 years. 
During 
all those years, faculty, university staff, and other Chapel Hill 
residents 
have endeavored and often struggled to nourish both minds and bodies.

"The Student's Plate: Food & Dining at the University of North Carolina 
Since 1795" continues in the North Carolina Collection Gallery through 
March, 2004.  On February 12 in Wilson Library, as part of the Gladys 
Coates University Lecture Program, Dr. James Leloudis will 
present "What's 
a University For?: Reflections on Carolina's History."  A reception and 
special Gallery tours of "The Student's Plate" will precede Dr. 
Leloudis's 
lecture at 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is open Mondays through Fridays, 
9:00-5:00; Saturdays, 9:00-1:00; and Sundays, 1:00-5:00.  For more 
information call 2-1172 or email Neil Fulghum at rfulghum at email.unc.edu.

	



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Jason E. Tomberlin
Special Projects Librarian
North Carolina Collection, UNC-CH
CB #3930, Wilson Library
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890
919-962-1172
jasont at unc.edu