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Students using Brown's kosher dining services on the night of Feb. 3 enjoyed a special meal in honor of the visit by Nadav Tamir, the Consul General of Israel to New England. In addition to the normal kosher fare, students also dined on "Gaza Strip" steaks, a menu item that was thought to have been discontinued after Israel relinquished control over the region in the 2005 Oslo accords. According to an anonymous source in the Ratty leadership, the idea for the meal was proposed after dining services stumbled upon a forgotten supply of the item during winter break.
Little is known about the kosher dining room, and the University will neither confirm nor deny its existence. Allegedly operating somewhere near the Sharpe Refectory's main dining hall, the top-secret room is rumored to require a retinal scan and an undisclosed "leap of faith" for entrance. Bill Flannagan, a Ratty worker who purportedly disappeared for five years while remaining on the University payroll, declined to comment on whether he had in fact been working for that dining room.
Such secrecy has led students to speculate about the quality of the kosher food. As Ratty frequenter Jake Smith '11 said, "The food must either be amazing, which is why I was tasered when I tried rushing the entrance, or embarrassingly bad." Other students, like Geoff Sims '09, are convinced that very little is different about the dining room. As Sims said, "I heard it's the same food, except that instead of knives and forks people use chopsticks, just like they do in Israel."
While students continue to guess what's on the kosher menu, a recent discovery might shed a little light onto what is for dessert. A Brown Noser investigative unit discovered packaging in the dumpster behind the Ratty that, according to its label, contained "Golan Heightsicles." Since there was no food left in the box, the Noser is unable to confirm the existence of such an item, but logic suggests that if it does exist, it tastes damn good.
The surprise dinner followed Tamir's on-campus lecture, which was relocated to MacMillian Auditorium and televised on ESPN2 to accommodate a larger audience. Given security concerns, a contingent of DPS Officers was deployed to provide stability for the event. Sgt. First Class Ray Evans, a squad leader in DPS's elite Not-Overweight Platoon, underscored the severity of the security situation, saying, "We were concerned that Tamir's eighteen bodyguards wouldn't provide sufficient protection."
Tamir spoke for roughly 45 minutes before accepting questions from the audience. Senator Lincoln Chafee '75 did his best to officiate the Q-and-A section of the program, which one observer described as "an even match between those supporting Tamir's articulation of the Israeli position and a group of students wearing signs on their necks."
Rounds of divided applause followed nearly each comment, leaving some spectators feeling "somewhat left out, but still excited by the action," as Jeff Ryan '09 said. A press release put out by the Watson Institute for International Studies called the event "a resounding success," citing the lack of physical violence as "evidence that a two-audience solution might be used in future events pertaining to the Israel-Palestine conflict."
