Sunday, December 2, 1956. 5:30 p.m. South Quad: The cafeteria line, Kelsey-Reeves Dining Hall
First one man, then another, shakes his head at the main dish (Corned Beef and Swiss Cheese on Lettuce) and takes only the Fruit Salad in Lime Jello on Lettuce, the Pineapple-Graham-Cracker Refrigerator Dessert, and milk. Soon a dozen are standing at the end of the line, eyeing the tray of every diner who follows them. Those who have turned down the corned beef are cheered. Any man who has taken it is hissed and booed.
Out at the tables, knives and forks begin to beat a rhythm. A chant begins: “We want good food, no more dog food!” A little band tries to infiltrate the kitchen, shouting “Down with the dietitians!” They are pushed out and the doors are locked.
The protesters move out into the lobby, then through the doors onto Madison, moving toward West Quad across the street.
A clipping from the Michigan Daily following the ’56 food riot, at which students demanded an end to food like “especially distasteful” ham balls and “cold, greasy and rubbery” eggs.
5:35 p.m. West Quad: Adams-Rumsey Dining Hall
At a single West Quad table, diners begin to pound in unison. (Later, no direct evidence is found to prove collusion between the two dorms, but the timing makes the inference all but incontestable.) The drumbeat spreads through the room and is taken up in the Chicago-Williams Dining Hall next door. Food and plates are piled on serving tables. The noise rises, starts to subside, then explodes as some 200 yelling residents of South Quad pour into West Quad’s courtyard. Snowballs fly toward open windows.
6:00 p.m. South Quad
Workers close the cafeteria lines 15 minutes early. (“I feel we might have had extensive damage if the lines had not been closed,” Joan Schwal, assistant dietitian, tells authorities later.) Hungry late-comers join the protesters in the street.
6:00-6:30 p.m. Madison Street
Students and their parents returning to South and West Quads from the annual holiday performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Hill Auditorium are pelted with snowballs.A chanting mob of indeterminate size—later estimates range from 150 to 1,200—flows up State Street to the front of the Union, then east in the direction of East Quad.
6:40 p.m. East Quad, North Concourse
Protesters from the western dorms are “received coolly” by diners in East Quad, according to the official report of the Inter-House Council, and add fewer than 20 to their number. Outside, four carloads of Ann Arbor’s finest keep their distance. The crowd makes a left at South University.
6:45. The President’s House, 815 S. University
President Harlan Hatcher is not at home, Walter Rea, dean of men, informs the crowd from the front steps. Take your complaints to your representatives, he says. The crowd disperses. Krazy Jim’s enjoys an especially busy dinner rush.
Sunday evening
Freshmen David Gumenick, Jeffrey Mandel and Roger Gottfried telephone reporters at three Detroit newspapers and the Associated Press.
Monday, December 3-5
Newspapers across the country publish news of a “food riot” at the University of Michigan. Officials declare they have received no complaints about food in the residence halls. Dean Rea assures anxious parents that the press has “grossly misrepresented the incident… We readily admit our inability to compete with mother’s cooking, but the quadrangle staff makes every effort to provide substantial, well-balanced and properly prepared meals.”
Tuesday, December 4
The South Quad Food Committee, appointed several weeks earlier, announces the results of its survey of dorm residents. Among the complaints are smaller portions than the year before; fried eggs “cold, greasy and rubbery;” soft-boiled eggs served raw or hard-boiled; toast served soggy and cold; “extremely poor” coffee cake; “especially distasteful” ham balls; “extremely poor” hamburgers consisting mostly of filler; diluted ketchup, mustard and salad dressing; “substandard” gravy; “poor” ice cream; and food served on dirty dishes.
Four years earlier, in the great panty raid of 1952, Deborah Bacon, the hard-nosed dean of women, had faced down a male mob far larger and more raucous than the food rioters of ’56. She is unimpressed.”Whoever heard of anyone being satisfied with institutional food?” she asks.
January 1957
The organizers are never identified. Gumenick, Mandel and Gottfried are kicked out of South Quad for calling the Detroit papers and thereby doing “a definite disservice to the residence halls and to the University.” “The source of the articles in the newspapers [were] immature, irresponsible and sensation-seeking resident students who I hope are happier in their present quickly found accommodations than they were in our residence halls,” says Leonard A. Schaadt, business manager of the residence hall system.
January-February 1957
Leonard A. Schaadt announces that the University will remove hash from residence hall menus, replace canned orange juice with frozen, and serve a higher grade of beef with “less tough meat and gristle.”
March 2, 1957
The University announces that residence hall diners will have a choice of two meats at every evening meal.
Sources were found chiefly in the papers of the U-M Housing Division, Bentley Historical Library.
Robert Cope - 1959, 61, 66
What a kick. I was working behind the counters at the time of the protest. Amusing, as I came from a comparatively impoverished background, thus, thought the food — if not wonderful — was (almost) to savor, smackable. Later, following one of the dieticians, I got promoted to the first male head of staff in a woman’s residence hall. Best job on the campus. Had 105 girls reporting to me. Ah, the days.
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samin khan - 1957
yes i was in michigan then that year but i was on a ford foundation fellowship doing my llm and was staying in a single room in lawyers’ inn/club-so there was no food problem for me.however since the dinner was held at 6 pm and i used to stay late in the room of the library-i used to feel hungry and go to a nearby restaurant to eat a hamburger or an omlette.
after lunch i player table tennis and then went to the common room/restaurant where i used to meet my friends and have coffee-i also used to visit international house where most foreign students used to meet each other.
but i enjoyed my stay of one year in ann arbor
a lot as the editor of the university paper
was a pakistani who used to give me a lot of publicity-i stll have some press cutting of that period which i can send by post-send me your postal address.
i finished writing my thesis -typed it-then gave it to professor paul kauper sr-i then left for london -there i received the letter of prof kauper offering me the degree of master of laws in comparative laws-my friend opened the letter and typed a letter in my name accepting the degree to prof kauper-the degree came to my house in karachi.
Samin khan,
master of laws Smu-law school,dallas texas 1956-master of laws in comparative laws-university of michigan-1957-
of lincoln’s inn,
barrister-at-law.
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Jane Cooper - 1960, 1972
One morning in the fall of 1956 the breakfast line at Alice Lloyd was entertained by the sight of a fried egg that had been thumbtacked to the bulletin board at the entrance to the cafeteria.
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Jack Seeleyt - 1959
I was in West Quad when this incident took place and the food riots were justified.
South Quad seemed to be a hot bed of other behavior that was outside normal for the University of Michigan..to wit: Spring 1956..first warm day and evening and South Quad residents began yelling “to the hill” repeatedly out their dorm windows..a small crowd of students gathered outside..we West Quad folk walked over to see what was afoot..it all grew to a mass of men who shouted “to East Quad to the women’s dorms”..and that was the first ‘panty raid’ in Michigan history. We learned it from MSU activities from the two previous years.
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John Leinonen - 1959
I was a resident of Reeves house at the time, and participated in the riot. The food was often as described by others in the posting. Also, in the same time frame, many South Quad residents succumbed to an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning caused by bacteria laden egg whites in the lemon merangue pie. Ah, those were the days!!
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Robert Bell - 1954
I remember one student at East Quad who nailed a fried egg to the bulletin board! I also remember every Saturday lunch was choice of either grilled cheese or grilled peanut butter sandwich.
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David Sigetich - 1968
Whatever the outcome of the food “riot” in late 1956, by the time I got to West Quad in 1963 the food quality had deteriorated again. I remember “quaddie-burgers” becoming a stimulus for peanut butter sandwiches at dinner.
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Judith Huntington Litherland - 1958
I lived in Betsy Barbour Residence Hall during my freshman year. The meals served were o.k. (my expectations were low following my sister’s residence in Alice LLoyd). We all knew when liver and onion were being served (as well as beef-birds a.k.a. shoe leather) from the odor. That’s when the entire dorm opted out of the dorm dinner and headed for the nearest hamburger joint. Much better!
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Shawn Payment - 1985
Great story! My spouse and I were S. Quad residents and although we recall the food as generally pretty good, we do still fondly recall meals of “elephant scabs” (a.k.a. Veal Parmesan) and the time a classmate pressed a plate of the dorm’s “gluey” mac & cheese to the bottom of a dining table and it stayed firmly afixed there for months after! Go Blue!
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Rick Hoppe - 1962
Wasn’t there then, but it had gotten worse at South Quad by 1962 when we were confronted with leftover strings of pot roast suspended in lime jello!!
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Ted Hamady - 1960
I recall the 1956 food riot starting in South Quad’s dining room when someone at our table upended his plate and everyone else quickly followed suit. We began yelling and throwing the offensive mess listed on the menu as “Beef Bird,” (a 3 1/2 ” football shaped glob of dressing tightly wrapped in a thin slice of grey-brown roast beef)around the room.
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Matthew Zivich, Sr. - 1960
I was a freshman living in Hayden House, East Quad and heard about the food riot later from friends who lived in South Quad. The menu at East Quad must have been the same, but we found it acceptable. I don’t remember anyone complaining. For me, the menu was unique and quite different from what I was used to eating at home. I never had grilled cheese and tomato soup together, or “Beef Birds”, or peanut butter sandwiches to fortify chop suey. And I’d never seen matzo bread before either.
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Sylvia Duda - 1958
I lived in Helen Newberry and we heard that the girls “on the Hill” were protesting about “beef birds”. We couldn’t understand the problem; we had “beef birds” and thought they were fine. But, we had excellent food at Newberry !!
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Evelyn McDonald - 1960
I entered Michigan in the fall of 1956. I worked in the Stockwell kitchen. One of my fond memories is serving oyster stew (which I cannot eat to this day) while intoning from Shakespeare’s witches, my special favorite verse, “…eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog.” Oddly enough we didn’t sell much oyster stew.
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Judy (Mansor) Brainard - 1960
I was a freshman, living in Jordan Hall, in 1956. I don’t have a memory of the food riots in the Quads, but do remember some odd combinations of foods in our cafeteria. The shredded carrot with raisin salad stands out. Yuck ! The grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup were my favorite lunch.
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Perry Ballard Jr. - 1966, 1967
I worked as a buss boy, food runner and dish machine operator in South Quad from 1962 through December of 1963. We had some meals I didn’t particularly enjoy (never liked my mother’s liver and onions either), but the ones I remember best were prime rib (twice a year) and the scallops and shrimp (quantities of which I managed to sidetrack on the run from the kitchen to the food lines). I didn’t have the spare money to eat anywhere else, so I enjoyed the good meals and was very selective on those I didn’t like. Food did get a bit better once South Quad became co-ed. (Also had a chance to see what the women really looked like without all the makeup and hairdo fixes when they went through the Friday Females Only food line. Quite an education.)
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David Stanton - 1959
I remember the food riot well. I was a freshman in Winchell House in West Quad. I worked busing tables for awhile in West Quad dining hall to help pay the bills. Probably ate better in West Quad than a couple years later when I moved out to a house on S Division St. There I ate a lot at some greasy spoon (the blue plate special..liver and onions). However, the hamburgers at Krazy Jim’s were fantastic, and will get my grand kids there one of these days when we make it to a football game.
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Greg Higby - 1977
As a South Quad resident in the 1970s, I can agree that the chow was still pretty bad. The Veal Parmesan had a much worse name during my 3 years at the Quad. Quaddie burgers were still awful, dried-out hockey pucks of some meat by product. My buddies in Kelsey House as a prank mailed one at the end of a semester to a guy who always raved about how good they were. When it arrived during winter break, after three or four days in the mail, his mother served it to him for dinner!
In 1973 or so, Kelsey House held its annual banquet with another house in South Quad. I don’t remember what caused it, but a full-fledged, Animal House-style food fight ensued! The lesson I learned there was that the soft-serve ice cream machine is the key objective in any serious food fight. As I recall, that was our last banquet …..
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Jerome Aronowitz - 1966, LSA
My freshman year was in West Quad’s Chicago House, and remember the good as a bit less than OK. My parents visited and I took them to my favorite restaurant- Blimpy Burger, of course- and they increased my allowance so I could buy better food! I recall delivery of pizza to the dorm- small sausage pizza 88 cents, and 12 cent tip to make it an even buck for dinner! Those were the days!
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Barbara Leitch LePoer - 1963 and 1968
Jordan Hall cheese cake is still the standard by which I judge all cheese cake.
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Dick Bloss
I lived in Van Tyne House South Quad and in 54 or 55 we had an incident. As people came out of the food line they dumped their cream chipped beef on toast onto a table until it over flowed on to the floor. The kitchen staff and the house mothers were agast. Don’t think we ever had creamed chipped beef again
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Ralph Edwards - 1963
Two years in the dorms, two years of riots. Riots however corresponded to the first warm spring night, not the food. Lost about 15 pounds after two months of dorm food, could jump over a card table with one step start. Probably the healthiest I ever was. After that, ate at Nakamura Coop. Not much better, but we could complain to the planner. Became expert meat loaf cook.
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Bert Forsmark
Ted Hamady, my best buddy at Jr. HS, has it exactly right. I remember the first dish turned over and the spontanious followups. The “beef birds” were a simmering complaint that Food Service ignored and then expressed surprise as if the rebellion was sudden and unexpected.
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John Scott - 1963
I was a first semester frosh in January, 1959 having graduated from my high school in mid-year. There was a “minor” food fight at West Quad that Winter. I had already eaten dinner, when news came of hard rolls being tossed around the dining room. Then a raucous noise in the Quadrangle that quickly moved to Madison Street in front of South Quad. When the shout “To the Hill” went out, the next stop was East Quad, and thence on to “The Hill”. I followed the crowd with modest interest as the core group shouted for “panties”. The center of the crowd was on the south side of Alice-Lloyd and I was standing in front of Mosher-Jordan with my two second-semester freshman roommates. Some coeds were dangling undergarments from the third floor of Mosher-Jordan, and I tossed a snowball in their direction. A mature gentleman touched my arm and said, “Let’s not start that, son”, and he moved off. My roommates started laughing hysterically, and I asked why.
“That was Dean Rea!” they told me. In my first month at UofM, I didn’t know what the Dean of Men even looked like. I did after that!
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Dave Bortman
I was at West Quad during the food riot. A couple of guys started chanting “We eat shit, We eat shit,” and threw food up against the wall. Other people joined in, and a large group marched out of the dining room. It was headlines in the Detroit newspapers the next day. I personally did not think there was anything wrong with the food. You brought back the memory.
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Bruce Laidlaw - 1963
They served us beef hearts in East Quad and people began tossing the hearts around the dining room. Then a mob went to the president’s house. When Harlan Hatcher didn’t appear, we moved to the hill and demanded panties. A few were dropped from the windows. One of the East Quad residents was suspended from school for an allegedly obscene dance he did on a dining room table.
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Jon Phillips - 1985
This article, and the comments, were particularly funny. I lived and ate at Bursley Hall in ’81 – ’82. I thought the food was pretty good. We got steak once a semester. They gave us a little ticket to make sure nobody got more than one. We didn’t get food on Sunday, after about 1 p.m., though. The pizza businesses (Cottage Inn and Domino’s) did a booming business on Sunday night! I used to try to force myself to eat some kind of ‘instant noodle meal’ on Sunday night, prepared in an electric water-heating appliance. I usually broke down and spent the money for pizza, though! Ha ha! Also, we tried to eat lunch as much as we could at one of the all-female dorms on the hill. They didn’t have to purchase in such volume, as the women didn’t eat as much, so they made up for it with better food quality. That was the legend, anyway!
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Anne Schneider - 1989
Having attended U of M much later, I can say the East Quad food was plentiful and decent. But students still love to poke fun at institutional food. I remember someone tacking up a “Soylent Green” sign over the cooked spinach. In one experiment my friend and I put the quad’s vanilla pudding in one dish and its cream of cauliflower soup in another and challenged people to identify which was which by appearance alone.
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jean anderson - 1953
As a freshman living at Stockwell Hall, I broke a tooth off when trying to eat a baloney sandwitch. The Dental School fixed it with a free gold crown!!
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David Gottfried - 1984
My dad, Roger Gottfried, was one of the students evicted from West Quad for notifying the media. I was also told that Time magazine compared the rioters to Hungarian freedom fighters, which I am sure did not win them praise from the university administration. Thanks for providing confirmation for this bit of family lore.
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Ken Bawcom
I was a freshman in East Quad, Cooley House, in 1966. I also worked in the kitchen. As I recall, the baked goods were baked on the premises, and pretty good, especially the pecan pie. Meats and sides weren’t too bad, just average institutional cafeteria stuff. The oddest thing was that they used to serve us two round corn ball fritters, and a polish sausage, by themselves on a plate. They were often placed so that they resembled male genitalia. That grossed me out too much to eat them. Any way you placed them, it was an odd combination.
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Marjorie Rooks - 1958, 1961, 1966
I was a Newberry resident and I guess we were a bit spoiled – good food, waitresses (our fellow housemates)and Sunday breakfast we could take to our And Miss Fossum, our dietician, was really nice.
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David Orne - BS Civil Engineering, 1958 MS Civil Engineering, 1959 Ph.D., Engineering Mechanics, 1969
If that was the “food riot” at South Quad which I saw on TV at East Quad, around 1956, I remember it fairly well, I think. I believe it was on a Sunday night and was carried on the local Detroit TV stations.
On Sundays, there was no breakfast served at the dormitory cafeterias, and the main meal was always around 1 PM, in case guests were invited. The evening meal was usually more like a lunch, and might have included something like grilled cheese sandwiches and home made chili. To me, both were usually delicious and something to look forward to and nothing to riot about. Personally I always found the food quite acceptable and thought the rioters at South Quad were just spoiled college kids looking for a food fight, after visitors, like family, had already left the campus.
Once at East Quad some disgruntled students let some dog in from the street and offered him some of the food off of a tray that they placed on the floor in the Cafeteria. Kind of disgusting but what can you expect from college students? Like the “panty raids” at the dorms on the Hill Friday evening, before a home football game.
I also recall that one Friday evening, while having dinner at the original Old German restaurant with my wife, the long conga line emanating from the gigantic bonfire pregame celebration (at Yost Field?) came “dancing” through the restaurant, in one door and out the other. That was a refreshing and delightful interruption of our dinner. Ah, I remember it well.
Go Blue!
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Lisa Kurcz Barclay - 1953, 1954
If the 1956 students think they had bad food, they should have been around Jordan Hall’s dining room in 1950-53 when I lived in Jordan, for it was even worse.We got concoctions like egg cutlets as the “meat” for dinner- chopped hard-boiled eggs in a white sauce batter thick enough to hold its shape as croquettes,which was then deep-fat fried. We also had beef stew in which we often got the potatoes, vegetables and gravy, but nary a piece of meat! Complaints got no redress. We could get seconds of vegetables and salad (brown shredded iceberg lettuce) but not of the meat dish . At first we were limited to one glass of milk a meal; later we were allowed 2 glasses at lunch. At least we had unlimited bread and margarine- the men’s dorms had a two slice limit for these hungry adolescents. There was no accomodation for dietary requirements of religious Jews (when there was pork, they just ate bread and salad), Roman Catholic meatless fast days (though there was some awful fish served most Fridays), or vegetarians. When I graduated in 1953 and was allowed to live off campus for graduate school, I reveled in being able to shop and cook my own food. I was amazed when I read recently about the new Mosher-Jordan dining hall. We could never have imagined such a thing.
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Robert Bell - 1954
It’s fun to remember and laugh at Dorm food from 60 years ago but we should also be aware that Dorm room and board {3 meals a day}was only about $130.00 a Semester!! What a bargain, compared to today!
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Jeffrey Poling - 1960 (1969)
I was a freshman living in West Quad/Allen Rumsey house during the food riot. One vivid recollection I have is of a little, very old, white haired serving lady who served me a plate of some kind of meat and mashed potatoes. In plain sight on the mashed potatoes was a long, black hair. When I pointed it out to her, she took one look at it, handed it back to me hair and all, and exclaimed, “Well you know it’s not one of mine!”
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