Princeton needs to fix some seriously absurd rules. I think most students agree that the new $200 ($200!) fine for propping a dorm door is ridiculous. Also, if you’re anything like me, your first thought after you heard about the Nude Olympics was, “someone needs to bring this back immediately.” But Princeton isn’t going to change these things, so I’ll settle for advocating for an important change that I think has potential: removing the requirement to wear shoes in the dining hall.
I don’t wear shoes. It’s not that I never wear shoes. That would be ridiculous. It’s just that I don’t wear shoes a lot of the time. When the weather is nice and I’m just going to class or hanging out, I’m frequently barefoot. This means that I sometimes walk into dining halls barefoot, and I’m normally kicked out if the staff notice.
People working in a kitchen may be subject to OSHA rules about footwear, but people eating the food are not. Health code regulations don’t require restaurant patrons to wear shoes, although some restaurants may make their own rules about required attire. There is no law requiring me to wear shoes in the dining hall, just Princeton’s silly rules.
Do I really need shoes to eat food? That seems excessive. In fact, I guarantee that my bare feet are more sanitary than anyone’s shoes. After all, they get washed pretty frequently. When was the last time you washed your shoes?
The health benefits of not wearing shoes are unclear. Sure, there are lots of websites that tout the advantages of going barefoot, and companies like Vibram have somehow convinced people to spend $100 to mimic not having shoes. But, at the end of the day, it’s just personal preference for me, and I don’t think it’s too absurd of a preference. It wouldn’t cost anything to accommodate me and my fellow shoeless diners. There might not be a lot of us, but maybe if the dining halls changed the rules, our numbers would grow.
I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to be barefoot. It’s certainly a lot more comfortable and saves water and energy, since I have fewer socks to wash. A lot of people don’t even notice. But it would be really nice if I didn’t have to borrow a friend’s flip flops to eat or carry around a pair that I’ll take off as soon as I step outside the dining hall.
Wearing shoes is like wearing gloves: It makes sense if it’s really cold or if you're working with heavy machinery, but it’s kind of weird to have them on all the time. If Princeton doesn’t make me wear gloves for sanitary reasons in the dining hall, then I don’t see why shoes should be any different.
There are a lot of problems in the world right now. Millions of people are refugees, diseases decimate large swaths of the world, the climate is totally messed up, and a racist orange combover has a serious shot at becoming the president. I can’t easily fix those problems, and neither can the administration. But the tyranny of forced shoe-wearing isn’t a hard problem to solve.
Beni Snow is a sophomore from Newton, Mass. He can be reached at bsnow@princeton.edu.
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