Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: The first week I arrived, I was met at the
Speaker 2: back door by local folks who were bringing in flats
Speaker 2: of blueberries, and it was just it was remarkable.
Speaker 1: That's Ken Cardon speaking. He's the executive chef at Bowden
Speaker 1: College in Maine. In the world of American colleges, Chef
Speaker 1: Cardon's food holds a special place.
Speaker 3: So you've consistently make the top nomber one spot on
Speaker 3: the lists of best college food. What are a couple
Speaker 3: of things that you think sets Boden apart?
Speaker 1: And that's Jacob Smith, one of my producers. He went
Speaker 1: up to Maine for Revisionist History's first culinary investigation.
Speaker 4: Can you just describe what we're looking at? Here?
Speaker 2: Directly below us is a salad bar, and you'll notice
Speaker 2: in the center of the salad bar there's several prepared salads, entrees, salads,
Speaker 2: and then you have your make your own areas. To
Speaker 2: the right and left, there's homemade soups in vegan options,
Speaker 2: there's fresh fruits and desserts, and then you'll see there's
Speaker 2: condiments and toppings, and we actually make our own peanut
Speaker 2: butter and bake our own breads, and that's all available
Speaker 2: at every meal.
Speaker 1: My guess is your college wasn't like this. Mine certainly wasn't.
Speaker 2: And as you can see, we always have a vegan
Speaker 2: and vegetarian item for our hot soups, and today a
Speaker 2: favorite for launch is a hot turkey sandwich in arizo
Speaker 2: and tofu salad.
Speaker 1: I worked in my college cafeteria as an undergrad, and
Speaker 1: just remembering that fact now is bringing the smell of
Speaker 1: the dining hall wafting back grease, disinfectant, aging, mayonnaise, cold
Speaker 1: fried eggs, all in some horrible combination that was the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. I don't think that anyone properly understood back
Speaker 1: then how crucial healthy eating was to a positive learning environment.
Speaker 1: Bodin is in a whole different class like Paradise.
Speaker 2: The deli special today is a smashed chickpea, avocado and
Speaker 2: pesto sandwich, and we have a faro salad with aspiragus
Speaker 2: and parmesan.
Speaker 4: Cool. So can we take a look at the kitchen?
Speaker 4: Are we able to go back there?
Speaker 2: As you can see if you look down right here
Speaker 2: at at this area, we're preparing fresh rosemary is one
Speaker 2: of the ingredients in tonight's dinner, and they're cutting chicken,
Speaker 2: so everything really is done from scratch.
Speaker 4: It has that for us, all.
Speaker 1: Touch, fresh rosemary and the personal touch. But here's what
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. The food at Bowden is
Speaker 1: actually a problem, a moral problem. I don't mean this
Speaker 1: in any way as a criticism of people like Ken Cardon.
Speaker 1: He's very, very good at what he does. Jacob, my producer,
Speaker 1: is a massive foodie and he was impressed. It takes
Speaker 1: a lot to impress Jacob. Not do I mean that
Speaker 1: people students in particular shouldn't eat properly. They should. The
Speaker 1: point is at every choice we make, even if it's
Speaker 1: the right choice at that moment, has larger consequences, some
Speaker 1: of them unexpected and paradoxical, and Ken Cardon's amazing food
Speaker 1: is one of those things. My name is Malcolm Glauwell.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Revisionist History, my podcast about things forgotten or misunderstood.
Speaker 1: This is actually episode two of a little three part
Speaker 1: mini series I've dropped into the middle of Revisionist History.
Speaker 1: It's a re examination of one of the most fundamental
Speaker 1: ideas in American life that if you have some ability
Speaker 1: and work hard, you can make it to the top.
Speaker 1: The episode before this was about a kid named Carlos,
Speaker 1: a brilliant kid, and just how many obstacles stand in
Speaker 1: the way of his making it out of south central
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. This episode is about what it takes for
Speaker 1: a poor kid to get a good college degree, and
Speaker 1: strange as it may sound, campus food at a place
Speaker 1: like Bowden is a big part of that problem. The
Speaker 1: best way to understand this is to compare Boden with
Speaker 1: one of its competitors, Vassar College. Vassar is in Poughkeepsie,
Speaker 1: just north of New York City. It's a lot like
Speaker 1: Boden in many ways. They're both small, elite Northeastern Liberal
Speaker 1: arts colleges. Lots of students apply to both schools. They're
Speaker 1: in the same category, but there are also some differences.
Speaker 1: Vassar is a little bigger and edgier, a lot more
Speaker 1: dyed hair and tattoos. Boden is smaller and preppier. Boden
Speaker 1: also has more money, not a lot more, but enough
Speaker 1: that it matters. And then there's the issue of food.
Speaker 4: How's the food at Vassar? What you say, food? It
Speaker 4: could be better, you know, there's always room for improvement.
Speaker 5: The Saldar always makes me kind of sad like one
Speaker 5: time I was eating like a spinach kale stirfry that
Speaker 5: was prepared and I may or may not have found
Speaker 5: like an industrial size staple in it.
Speaker 1: The president of Vassar College is a woman named Catherine Hill.
Speaker 1: She's an economist by training. Tall, gracious, distinguished, a touch
Speaker 1: of gray, what you would expect from an academic leader.
Speaker 1: We met in her office on the Vassar campus, which
Speaker 1: is full of lots of Gothic greystone buildings and creaky
Speaker 1: oak staircases, huge double sash windows, ancient rugs, all very
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. Before she was at Vassar, Catherine Hill was
Speaker 1: at Williams College, about two hours north of Poughkeepsie. She
Speaker 1: was the provost. While she was there, Princeton dramatically expanded
Speaker 1: its financial aid, and suddenly every liberal arts college in
Speaker 1: the country felt it had to examine its policies as well.
Speaker 6: So we had to figure out what we were going
Speaker 6: to do in response to Princeton announcing that they were
Speaker 6: going to move away from loans.
Speaker 1: So Hill teams up with another economist and starts digging
Speaker 1: around in the data from the admissions office.
Speaker 6: A colleague of mine, Gordon Winston, and I asked the question,
Speaker 6: do we know what we're actually asking families to pay
Speaker 6: to come to Williams. So we'd always assumed that we
Speaker 6: were doing just, you know, a great job with talented
Speaker 6: kids from all different economic backgrounds. And what we found
Speaker 6: out was that we were asking students from lower income
Speaker 6: quintils to pay an awfully high share of their family
Speaker 6: income to come to attend. And we were also finding
Speaker 6: out that we weren't getting many, not surprisingly, you know,
Speaker 6: I think we were finding that we were asking families
Speaker 6: in the bottom forty percent of the income distribution to
Speaker 6: pay about fifty percent of their family incomes free tax.
Speaker 1: He'll saying that at that time, if the family of
Speaker 1: a poor, smart kid wanted their child to go to Williams,
Speaker 1: that have to spend half their income on tuition half.
Speaker 1: That's why there were so few poor kids at Williams.
Speaker 1: So while she's at Williams, the school starts making its
Speaker 1: financial aid a lot more generous, then He'll becomes president
Speaker 1: of Vassar.
Speaker 6: Vasser was an institution that was committed to these kinds
Speaker 6: of issues, and when we looked at the actual data,
Speaker 6: it turned out that compared to some of our peer
Speaker 6: schools we, in fact, weren't all that either in terms
Speaker 6: of socioeconomic diversity or racial diversity.
Speaker 1: So she decides to change Vassar's priorities. Students from the
Speaker 1: poorest families in the United States get a small five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars grand from the federal government called a pel grant.
Speaker 1: Hill decides she wants to accept way more pel grant
Speaker 1: students Advassor. So, what are you spending on financially?
Speaker 6: We're spending about sixty million dollars sixty million. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: when I started to know six it was about twenty
Speaker 6: five million. I see. So it's basically it's about double.
Speaker 6: And we have about twenty three percent pell grant recipients,
Speaker 6: which makes us, I think, the highest amongst a very
Speaker 6: large group of schools and the lowest income.
Speaker 1: Kids and pale. When you started, what was was it?
Speaker 1: I think I read eleven percent when you started.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not even sure we
Speaker 6: were tracking it, but it was in the low teens.
Speaker 1: That was ten years ago. Since then, Hill has discovered
Speaker 1: two things. The first is exactly what we talked about
Speaker 1: in the last episode. There's a ton of smart, poor
Speaker 1: kids out there. You can easily double the number that
Speaker 1: you accepted a school like Vassar and not compromise your
Speaker 1: academic standards. Okay, that's the first thing, the good news.
Speaker 1: Then there's the bad news.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of school said, okay, so yeah,
Speaker 6: they're out there, let's see if we can find some
Speaker 6: and recruit more. I think over time, I've come to
Speaker 6: realize that the main constraint, despite commitments on the parts
Speaker 6: of schools to do this, the reality is is if
Speaker 6: you take a talented, low income kid, you've got to
Speaker 6: offer significantly more financial aid. And every dollar that you
Speaker 6: spend on financial aid is a dollar that you don't
Speaker 6: have to spend on something else, and that is ultimately
Speaker 6: the real challenge.
Speaker 1: Tuition at Vassar including room and board is sixty two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. You let in some poor kid
Speaker 1: for free, you're out somewhin range of sixty two thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Give me an.
Speaker 1: Example of the kind of trade offs you've had to
Speaker 1: deal with because you wanted to increase your financial aid package.
Speaker 6: It would be spending more to renovate old dormitories and bathrooms.
Speaker 6: It would be better food in the dining hall. You know,
Speaker 6: many of those things are really good things, and you're
Speaker 6: always making trade offs.
Speaker 1: Yeah in the margin, did you catch that better food
Speaker 1: in the dining hall? Right after my producer Jacob went
Speaker 1: to Bowden to check out their food, he went to Vassar.
Speaker 4: How often do you eat there?
Speaker 7: About twice a day?
Speaker 1: Jacob is talking to a sophomore advassor named Amanda.
Speaker 7: So, lunch and dinner usually I do like a quick
Speaker 7: breakfast in the dinner because breakfast is notoriously their best meal.
Speaker 4: And what about dinner? What's dinner look like?
Speaker 7: Pretty terrifying? Sometimes it's weird. It oscillates between Sometimes they
Speaker 7: have really good ethnic food. Actually they'll surprisingly put together
Speaker 7: a very good meal, and then there's other nights where
Speaker 7: you get there and it's kind of like pasta very sad,
Speaker 7: like neat sandwich thing you're not really sure about, and
Speaker 7: like pizza, usually end.
Speaker 4: Up with soup that night.
Speaker 8: It's yeah, what.
Speaker 4: Would you say?
Speaker 3: Like The most common complaints about the food from students.
Speaker 7: Usually lack of variety of taste. Also, some people it's
Speaker 7: kind of gross to talk about, but like claim it
Speaker 7: really gives them indigestion, Like they're not happy with the
Speaker 7: quality of.
Speaker 3: The food by indingestion. Do you mean it has like
Speaker 3: a laxative effect? Is that the complaint because I've heard
Speaker 3: that elsewhere.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's one hundred percent what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: If you could step in and make like sweeping changes
Speaker 3: to dining at vast or what would you change.
Speaker 7: Sweeping changes? I mean my thing is like, I know,
Speaker 7: I'm kind of spoiled because I'm from California, so I'm
Speaker 7: used to just a higher quality of food in general,
Speaker 7: because like the soudbar always makes me kind of sad,
Speaker 7: like or like the nights where they're like we have
Speaker 7: guacamolan and it's like literally just like this pasty disgusting,
Speaker 7: like just you know, they obviously just purade some like
Speaker 7: unripe avocados.
Speaker 1: Vassar has terrible food. Boden practically has a Michelin star.
Speaker 1: Two otherwise almost identical schools that, on this one measure
Speaker 1: couldn't be more different, and why because Boden doesn't spend
Speaker 1: nearly as much on financial aid as Vassar does. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't want to single out Boden as some kind
Speaker 1: of moral villain. There are lots of private colleges in
Speaker 1: the US that do a far worse job than Boden
Speaker 1: at educating low income students. But just listen to these numbers.
Speaker 1: Twenty three percent of Vassar's undergraduates are on pelgrants. That is,
Speaker 1: they come from the poorest part of American society. At Boden,
Speaker 1: just thirteen percent of students are on pelgrants, so just
Speaker 1: over half as many as at Vassar. The New York
Speaker 1: Times does something called an Access Index, which measures how
Speaker 1: good a job a college does at opening its doors
Speaker 1: to low income students. The way the index works, an
Speaker 1: average score is one. If you do better than average,
Speaker 1: your score is greater than one. Among all American universities
Speaker 1: and colleges measured, Vassar comes in eighth with a score
Speaker 1: of one point three six, behind only the University of
Speaker 1: Florida and the big schools in the University of California system,
Speaker 1: it is the most open and accessible private school in
Speaker 1: the land. Boden is fifty first at one point zero five,
Speaker 1: just above average. If you want an example of a
Speaker 1: school that does really badly in the New York Times Index,
Speaker 1: New York University NYU is a point six y five,
Speaker 1: which ranks it one hundred and fifty six, which is appalling. Now,
Speaker 1: why does this matter? We don't want all schools to
Speaker 1: be the same. What's wrong with a system where one
Speaker 1: school spends its marginal dollar on gathering the most interesting
Speaker 1: and diverse group of undergraduates possible, and then another school
Speaker 1: spends its marginal dollar on artisanal cheese. It shouldn't matter, right,
Speaker 1: But if you dig into the way the university system
Speaker 1: works in the United States, you discover that it matters
Speaker 1: a lot. Boden and Vassar are connected. I'm back at Vassar.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in a small conference room in the main
Speaker 1: administration building. In front of me is Robert Walton, Vassar's
Speaker 1: vice president of finance. Vasser might be the home of
Speaker 1: the edgy and the tattooed, but that's not Robert Walton.
Speaker 1: He's a numbers guy, white hair, carefully trim beard. He's
Speaker 1: got the school's budget open in front of him.
Speaker 8: So if we look at our total budget sort of
Speaker 8: what we actually spend, it's about one hundred and sirventy
Speaker 8: five million dollars. And if you think about it in
Speaker 8: just big groups, about two thirds of that are fees
Speaker 8: that we collect from different sources, and about a one
Speaker 8: third of that budget comes from the endowment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now the tuition bucket. How does that break down?
Speaker 8: You know, we are like many schools like we have
Speaker 8: sort of a barbell effect. That's a slightly inelegant metaphor,
Speaker 8: but it works. We tend to have a grouping at
Speaker 8: each end, those who have a full ability to pay
Speaker 8: and those who have low ability to pay.
Speaker 1: The math looks like this. There are two four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty undergraduates Advassor. A thousand of them are on
Speaker 1: the wealthy end of the barbell. They pay full tuition
Speaker 1: or close to it. That comes to sixty million dollars
Speaker 1: a year in revenue. The rest of the students at
Speaker 1: the other end of the barbell pay about half that much.
Speaker 1: They're the ones receiving some kind of financial aid. There's
Speaker 1: way more of them, but they contribute much less to
Speaker 1: the bottom line. So Vassor makes up for that lost
Speaker 1: revenue with money drawn from the endowment. I've grossly simplified
Speaker 1: matters to the point where if Robert Walton hears this,
Speaker 1: he'll cringe. But that's basically how the finances at Vassor work.
Speaker 1: A couple of questions before you went, you made this shift,
Speaker 1: which was what roughly ten.
Speaker 6: Years ago, roughly two thousand and seven. It happened mid
Speaker 6: year sort of so so hard.
Speaker 1: That's Marian Begemann, Vassar's head of strategic planning. She's sitting
Speaker 1: next to Walton formal business suit. What would your percentage
Speaker 1: of full pay have been back then? In the earlier era, roughly.
Speaker 7: We were around eighty, no, seventy five to eighty let's.
Speaker 1: Say, seventy five to eighty percent of students paid full
Speaker 1: tuition back then. This is an important point. The Barbelle
Speaker 1: used to be heavily weighted on the high full paying
Speaker 1: end and have almost nothing on the other end. When
Speaker 1: President Hill transforms Vassar a decade ago, she basically switches that.
Speaker 1: She replaces hundreds of full paying students with students who
Speaker 1: pay very little. As a result, Vassar goes from a
Speaker 1: place that quite comfortably supported itself on tuition revenue to
Speaker 1: a place that has to rely really heavily on its
Speaker 1: endowment to make the numbers work. Now, Vassar is wealthy
Speaker 1: enough to pull that off. It all adds up, but barely.
Speaker 1: They have no wiggle room. So the one thousand kids
Speaker 1: who pay full tuition Vasser needs every single one. Without them,
Speaker 1: everything falls apart financially. I asked Walton, what would happen
Speaker 1: if the number of full paying students dropped? If even
Speaker 1: fifty of that one thousand went elsewhere.
Speaker 8: That would be bad. That would be bad.
Speaker 1: No wiggle room. Okay, now about the endowment once again.
Speaker 1: Boden College is a good comparison. Boden starts twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: with an endowment of one point four billion dollars. They
Speaker 1: make a healthy return on that, which they divide up.
Speaker 1: A quarter of it goes to pay for financial aid,
Speaker 1: three quarters of it goes back into the endowment. That
Speaker 1: three quarters incidentally comes to one hundred and twenty million dollars.
Speaker 1: So to put it another way, Boden had one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million dollar cushion last year. What I've just
Speaker 1: described explains how endowments et elite universities keep getting bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger. They earn way more on their endowment every
Speaker 1: year than they need to balance the books. This is
Speaker 1: a bit of an aside, but here's a really extreme
Speaker 1: example of the endowment cushion. Princeton. They start twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: with twenty point six billion dollars in the bank. Let
Speaker 1: me repeat that, twenty point six billion dollars in the bank.
Speaker 1: They make two point one billion on their investments over
Speaker 1: the course of the year. After they've covered their costs
Speaker 1: and paid for all their financial aid, they had seven
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars left over, and after you add in
Speaker 1: all the other money they raised, Princeton ends the year
Speaker 1: with an endowment of twenty two point seven billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Princeton is a perpetual motion cash machine. There is literally
Speaker 1: no way they can ever run out of money. If
Speaker 1: they wanted to build a half a billion dollar dormitory
Speaker 1: with marble staircases, mahogany floors, and solid gold bathroom fixtures,
Speaker 1: they could pay for it aut of petty cash and
Speaker 1: still bank two hundred million dollars. That's wiggle room. By
Speaker 1: the way, given that fact, you might wonder why anyone
Speaker 1: would ever give money to Princeton. Good question. I have
Speaker 1: way more to say about this subject. That's what next
Speaker 1: week's episode is about. But let's go back to Vassar.
Speaker 1: Things are a lot more complicated there. They have about
Speaker 1: a billion dollars in their endowment. That's less than Boden,
Speaker 1: but for Vassor. To cover their expenses, they need to
Speaker 1: take out significantly more from their endowment than Boden does,
Speaker 1: so they don't have the same kind of cushion. Last year,
Speaker 1: In fact, Vassar had a bad year and they ended
Speaker 1: up withdrawing more than they earned. You can't keep doing
Speaker 1: that year in and year out and survive as an institution.
Speaker 1: No wiggle room. So what are Vassor's other options. Well,
Speaker 1: they could get smaller. One of the reasons Boden is
Speaker 1: in such better shape is that Boden has a only
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred students. Vassar is more than a third larger.
Speaker 1: If Vasser were boded in size, then suddenly they have
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty fewer students to subsidize with their endowment.
Speaker 1: If I said to you, completely hypothetically, I want you
Speaker 1: to run this college in such a way as to
Speaker 1: maximize the amount of financial resources available, would you shrink
Speaker 1: the student body?
Speaker 8: In a perfect world, that would be the technique I
Speaker 8: would prefer.
Speaker 1: That's Vassar's VP Robert Walton. Again Note that he says
Speaker 1: in a perfect world, but of course that's the last
Speaker 1: thing Vasser would ever do. It would be totally self defeating.
Speaker 1: The whole point of Catherine Hill's transformation of Vasser was
Speaker 1: to try and educate as many poor smart kids as possible,
Speaker 1: because America has a huge problem with not providing opportunity
Speaker 1: for poor smart kids. If you cut six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty spots, then you're part of the problem.
Speaker 8: Again, I'm a fiscal conservative, but she's convinced me. We
Speaker 8: don't pay any taxes in terms of to the fads
Speaker 8: of the states, so we are a tax subsidized entity.
Speaker 8: So one would logically conclude then if you have a
Speaker 8: large endowment, you really have an obligation to provide a
Speaker 8: public good, not just to educate the rich.
Speaker 1: This is something people always forget. Universities don't pay taxes.
Speaker 1: We subsidize them. You and I. When Princeton makes that
Speaker 1: two point four billion dollars return on their endowment, they
Speaker 1: don't pay a dime of capital gains taxes on it.
Speaker 1: And Walton's pointing out something really really crucial, which is
Speaker 1: that if you get that kind of subsidy from society,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to give back. Cutting six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: spots is not giving back. All right, how about this
Speaker 1: cut back on faculty, bigger classes. No no, no, that
Speaker 1: also defeats the purpose. The whole point of the Vasser
Speaker 1: experiment is to give students of all backgrounds the best
Speaker 1: possible education. If you make the education worse in order
Speaker 1: to pay for the students who need a good education,
Speaker 1: then you're right back where you started from. The point
Speaker 1: of Vasser is that the best education comes when you
Speaker 1: mix students from all backgrounds. When the child of an
Speaker 1: investment banker sits in class next to the child of
Speaker 1: a janitor, the two of them have a learning experience
Speaker 1: that they could not have amongst people just like themselves.
Speaker 1: That's what they're trying to protect. So what do you
Speaker 1: do if you're Vassar and you're trying to protect that
Speaker 1: idea of what an education is. You have only one option.
Speaker 1: You tighten your belt as tight as you can. You
Speaker 1: don't do anything extravagant.
Speaker 8: I worked with a college at one time, it was
Speaker 8: sure going name that opened a new residence hall in
Speaker 8: the last five years that was all singles that had
Speaker 8: double beds.
Speaker 1: Basically, the dorm was a high end hotel.
Speaker 8: You know, there are these amenities that some schools do
Speaker 8: that are just kind of crazy and over the top.
Speaker 8: But they do all kinds of things. You know, they
Speaker 8: have more money for speaker series than we do. We
Speaker 8: can't pay Bill Clinton to come and speak for three
Speaker 8: hundred thousand that more. Prior institution did things like that.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton the ultimate college amenity. The problem with belt tightening, though,
Speaker 1: is attracting those one thousand full pay students, the ones
Speaker 1: whose money Vassar desperately needs. Who are they They're the
Speaker 1: children of professionals, upper middle class and upper class Manhattan,
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills, Boston, San Francisco. They grew up privileged. They
Speaker 1: have certain expectations about lifestyle. Those amenities that Bob Walton
Speaker 1: says are kind of crazy and over the top. That's
Speaker 1: what these kids are used to. So this is what
Speaker 1: keeps Catherine Hill up at night. How can she keep
Speaker 1: those wealthy kids coming to Vassar if she can't provide
Speaker 1: them with the lifestyle that they're used to.
Speaker 6: We are operating in an economy right now where income
Speaker 6: and equality has increased over the last thirty to forty years,
Speaker 6: So we are looking to attract talented students from high
Speaker 6: income families. These are kids who have grown up with
Speaker 6: their own bedroom and their own bathroom and when they
Speaker 6: come looking at college campuses, those are some of the
Speaker 6: things that the families are looking for.
Speaker 1: Rasser asks those kids to do without some of the
Speaker 1: luxuries they were raised with, and that's a hard sell.
Speaker 6: Every time another school with which we compete makes a
Speaker 6: different decision and doesn't spend it on financial aid, then
Speaker 6: it puts us in the position of being in a
Speaker 6: tougher position to compete for the full pay students.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see. You mean if another school spends lesson
Speaker 1: builds a fancier X and you don't have the fancy X.
Speaker 6: Yeah, then they're gonna take some of those kids away
Speaker 6: from us who want the fancy X.
Speaker 1: Hill didn't name any names, but you know who she's
Speaker 1: talking about. She's talking about Boden and the kids she
Speaker 1: worries that Boden will take away are the kids from
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills in Manhattan who grew up on beautifully ripe
Speaker 1: avocados and freshly cut rosemary. Robert Walton serves on something
Speaker 1: called the Parents Advisory Committee at Vassar, which is basically
Speaker 1: the parents of the rich kids, and he hears it
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 8: They come and that you know they want to talk
Speaker 8: to the senior officers about you know, their observations. You know,
Speaker 8: it's sort of a you know, tough love kind of meeting.
Speaker 8: They always ask about food, They always ask about housing,
Speaker 8: They always you.
Speaker 1: Know, they what do they say when they bring up food?
Speaker 1: Do they complain about food or that?
Speaker 8: Basically, and so my reaction is, we need to make
Speaker 8: food better. And we actually aren't going to make food better.
Speaker 8: But if food is really important to you, and if
Speaker 8: housing is really important to you, don't come to vasser
Speaker 8: That's not what we focus on. That's just not what
Speaker 8: we're into. Yeah, that's you know, and no apologies for that.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's just not what we do.
Speaker 1: This is why I said at the beginning that food
Speaker 1: is actually a moral issue, because how long do you
Speaker 1: think Vassar can continue to do this, to say to
Speaker 1: parents and students, if food is really that important to you,
Speaker 1: go somewhere else. Those kids come to Vassar for a
Speaker 1: campus visit and eat a soggy piece of pizza. Then
Speaker 1: they go to Boden where Chef Cardone is the god
Speaker 1: of the dining hall. He's got amazing resources, a bigger
Speaker 1: endowmented six hundred and fifty fewer students, half as many
Speaker 1: kids on pelgrants and every day he's taking it up
Speaker 1: a notch in a kitchen. How long can Soggi pizza
Speaker 1: hold up against Ken Cardon. When my producer Jacob was
Speaker 1: on his culinary investigation at Boden, the students talked about
Speaker 1: the food of their school like they were in Paris.
Speaker 9: In the beginning of the year. That ice cream didn't
Speaker 9: really taste that well, like it was like kind of watery,
Speaker 9: and so I know someone wrote a complaint card, like guys,
Speaker 9: and then now it's like so much better, like they
Speaker 9: just fixed it.
Speaker 4: I've heard good things about the dessert. Is it good?
Speaker 1: How do you compete with this?
Speaker 4: On your first time campus?
Speaker 10: There's this lobster bake where every student on campus has
Speaker 10: the choice of having a lobster for dinner or a
Speaker 10: steak or a vegetarian option. It's really phenomenal.
Speaker 3: If I like to ask you, maybe like a respective
Speaker 3: student was coming to campus and they were asked about
Speaker 3: the food, what would be your like your one sentence
Speaker 3: pitch or how would you describe it?
Speaker 10: It's sort of indescribable in the way that you can't
Speaker 10: explain to someone how it's always changing, and it's always fresh,
Speaker 10: and it's always different. It pushes you to try new things,
Speaker 10: which is I think what college is all about, which
Speaker 10: is experimenting and reaching out to new worlds. And you
Speaker 10: know the fact that the food here helps you do
Speaker 10: that as well is incredible.
Speaker 1: I cannot get over how excited this kid is about
Speaker 1: the food of bud. Do you think he talks this
Speaker 1: way about his professors?
Speaker 3: Oh if you tried things that like you wouldn't have
Speaker 3: tried otherwise, Like what kind of meals or dishes?
Speaker 10: Oh wow, the other night had an egg plant parmesan pancake.
Speaker 10: You know, I don't think I could have even told
Speaker 10: you that was a real thing until I had it.
Speaker 10: You know, I walked past it didn't travel, and I
Speaker 10: went like the might as well, and it was phenomenon.
Speaker 1: I have sex, actually eggplant parmerson pancake. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is completely absurd. This is everything that's wrong with American colleges.
Speaker 4: We had venison here during deer season.
Speaker 10: It was really just fresh, locally sourced, different kinds of
Speaker 10: meats that I would never expect to see in a
Speaker 10: college dining hall.
Speaker 1: There's only one solution. If you're looking at liberal arts colleges.
Speaker 1: Don't go to Boden. Don't let your kids go to Boden.
Speaker 1: Don't let your friends go to Boden. Don't give money
Speaker 1: to Boden or to any other school that serves amazing
Speaker 1: food in its dining home. Because every time you support
Speaker 1: a school that spends its money on amazing food, every
Speaker 1: time you cast a vote in favor of eggplant parmesan
Speaker 1: pancakes and lobster bakes and venison during deer season, you're
Speaker 1: making it harder and harder for someone like Catherine Hill
Speaker 1: to create opportunities for poor kids. Suck it up and
Speaker 1: go to Vassar. Send a message to the Bodons of
Speaker 1: the world about what really matters.
Speaker 7: Fresh fruit is atrocious. Sometimes we get bananas, and then
Speaker 7: sometimes we get strawberries or grapes, but those are like
Speaker 7: strawberries and grapes are like those are a big deal.
Speaker 7: Like you go steal like five cups of.
Speaker 3: That, so you pocket them and run out with your
Speaker 3: pockets full of Absolutely.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I'm not joking.
Speaker 1: This is Amanda again, the Vassar sophomore who complained about
Speaker 1: the guacamal Amanda, the spoiled Californian, as she described herself.
Speaker 1: But I will say this for Amanda. She gets it,
Speaker 1: she understands what's at stake. Atrocious fresh fruit is a
Speaker 1: small price to pay for a little social justice.
Speaker 7: I still complain regularly about the food and whatnot, but
Speaker 7: I just feel much better knowing that that money's going
Speaker 7: towards something useful. I would much prefer that our school'll
Speaker 7: be giving money to that than trying to make our
Speaker 7: food better. You know, first case scenario, you get the
Speaker 7: minimum meal plan and you can eat out.
Speaker 4: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what
Speaker 1: you've heard, do us a favor and rate us on iTunes.
Speaker 1: You can get more information about this and other episodes
Speaker 1: at Revisionististory dot com or on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced by me La Belle, Roxanne Scott,
Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
Speaker 1: composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flon Williams is
Speaker 1: our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka, and the Panoply management
Speaker 1: team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 7: I I think was beer completed by the y