Snacktime
Pomona's late-night ritual offers carbs and conversation to student hungry for both.

By Anne Shulock '08

Above an empty Bixby Plaza the clock tower reads 10:25. Not a sound breaks the silence of the Sunday night. Then, two people cross the courtyard. Out of the shadows emerge groups of students, all approaching Frary Dining Hall. Soon a buzz fills the air, echoing in the famously good acoustics of the dining hall steps.

It’s Snack time.

Snack is a wildly-popular Pomona ritual in which, from 10:30 to 11:30 on Sunday through Thursday nights, Frary reopens to give hungry and weary students a chance to eat, chat and avoid those essays and problem sets for just a little longer. The late-night nosh is a sweet deal for students who are often swamped with homework, rehearsals, jobs and sports practices. “Snack is a little break from life,” says Janelle Hing ’08.

This mini-meal was born in 1996 out of a food committee discussion about poorly-attended breakfasts. Students were really hungry around 10 or 11 p.m., says Dean of Students Ann Quinley, who adds that Snack “has been a hit from the first moment it began.”

During a Sunday Snack in the fall, the first batches of pizza and giant soft pretzels were gone six minutes after the doors opened. By 10:40 p.m., 229 students had grabbed something to eat. By the end of the night, more than 500 students— a third of Pomona’s entire student body—had stopped by. Malex Reed ’07 found out about Snack from his host when he visited Pomona as a prospective student. “I thought it was the best thing ever,” he says. Though embarrassed to admit that Snack influenced his college choice, he says the nocturnal tradition convinced him that Pomona was more fun than its East Coast counterparts.

During his first year, Reed’s sponsor group would walk up from South Campus together. “We used to get here early and wait outside the door,” remembers sponsor group-mate Alejandra
McCord ’07. Now, four years later, six students from that same sponsor group are still sitting together late into the night. “I’m going to miss Snack when I graduate,” says Susan Durst ’07, who has come to Snack five times a week her entire time at Pomona—even when she
lived in The Cottages on the edge of campus.

Christian Lopez ’07, also a member of that sponsor group, estimated that he has missed only 20 nights in four years. “I’m famous for coming to Snack,” he says. “I used to stay from an hour to an hour and 15 minutes—definitely after the door was closed.” Now in the fall of his senior year, Snack is slightly less important because Lopez eats breakfast every day,
but “every other semester Snack has been my third meal of the day. I’ve counted on it for survival.” Other students, like Reed, find that with their busy, late-night schedules and young-adult metabolism, three meals a day are not enough. He reveals that one summer while in Mexico doing a research program, “I lost 15 pounds … because I could only eat three
times a day.”

Many students come for the company as well as the quesadillas. “There are always people here,” says Durst. “You work all day, and you just don’t get enough people time.” Adds McCord, only half joking: “Sometimes I can only find my boyfriend at Snack.”

Snack is such a big deal that it has figured in student election campaigns, and some candidates have made moving Snack to South Campus the central feature of their platforms, though they have yet to achieve a lasting change in location. Luckily, many students do not let the five-minute trek from South Campus keep them from their corndogs. Andy Cohn ’08 admits that during his first year, his sponsor “used to drive us to Snack.”