The tradition of community dinners started in 1907, at the founding of Berkshire School. Bebe Bullock ’86 explained, “The headmaster Mr. Buck and his wife Mrs. Buck thought of Berkshire as a large community and family, instead of a small school. They made the students sit at round tables with faculty for three meals a day; they insisted on round tables for better conversation, to make it just like a family meal. Up until the early 90s, most dinners were community dinners except Wednesdays and Saturdays.”
Community dinners were created to help students make new connections at school with people who they might have never met before. Now we are assigned to sit with around 5-8 randomized students and one faculty member at our dinner table. Being assigned a table with multiple random students from any grade pushes students to meet new people and create new bonds, or even sometimes friendships, by having dinners with them.
Four Community dinners are held in each of the fall and spring trimesters, on Tuesday nights from 6:00-7:00 pm. This year the fall community dinners were on September 24th, October 1st, October 8th, and October 25th. Unlike previous years, there were no table waiters, as the school wanted to encourage full table participation when cleaning up. Before this year, there was one student per table assigned the role of a “table waiter,” who was responsible for cleaning up after the meal.
Our Student Council committee created themes for each dinner this fall to add excitement to the dinner. The first theme was monochrome; students and faculty showed up in all green, all white, all gray, all brown, and many other monochrome outfits. The second was patterns. People wore patterned outfits, with stripes, polka dots, and floral prints. Decades was the third theme, and it was a little more difficult to dress up in, although people seemed to have a lot of fun with it. There were a lot of flared jeans, thick headbands, and sweater vests. The last theme was hats/headwear. This was definitely the most comical theme, as people showed up in bright neon hats, princess crowns, funky sunglasses, and headbands. Overall, I would say that the whole school loved the first four community dinners of the year!
