While many students returned home to spend Thanksgiving with family, those who stayed on campus over break — due to travel distance, concerns over productivity, and other reasons — celebrated with a different type of community.
Daniel Wang ’26 was one of the students who opted to stay on-campus for Thanksgiving instead of traveling back home to China. For lunch on Thursday, Wang enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving meal at the Whitman dining hall — the only dining hall that was open during break.
“It made me feel like I’m home. The food was excellent, the ambiance was amazing,” Wang said. “We’ve got a saxophone player, tables lined with linens, the turkey is very tender, and the dessert and apple cider were all amazing.”
After his Thanksgiving lunch, Wang took a boxed to-go dinner from Whitman, which closed for the evening.
“The last staff members, probably me and the other manager, [got] out of here at around 2:30, so it [gave] us plenty of time to go home and have dinner with our families,” said Dante Ingato, the Culinary Hospitality Manager at Whitman.
Ingato says he is proud of the other staff members’ work in making campus feel warm for those staying during Thanksgiving.
“It’s nice to still make people feel like they’re at home, and if it’s not a part of their personal celebrations or heritage to celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s just another way to show them how Americans do it,” he said.
Emily Zhou ’27 also attended the Thanksgiving feast for lunch. She’s from upstate New York, and she decided to stay on campus because “travel can be kind of a hassle recently.”
For Thanksgiving dinner, she ate with friends at SC House, a Sichuan restaurant on Nassau Street.
“I just prefer my cultural food,” she said.
While some schools like Yale started break on Monday, Nov. 20, Princeton’s Thanksgiving recess did not officially begin until Wednesday, Nov. 22 — a day before the holiday. Zhou says if she had Monday and Tuesday off, she would have gone back home.
“It would help us avoid peak travel times,” Zhou said.
In addition to the Whitman dining hall’s Thanksgiving meals, some residential colleges organized their own activities on Thursday. For example, there were dinners held on Thursday night at the Yeh, Whitman, and Rockefeller Head of College’s Houses. According to Whitman's Head of College Claire Gmachl, this event began as a student initiative in 2019 and has since become an annual tradition.
“It’s just one of many offerings on campus over the break,” Gmachl wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “It seems that students on campus during the holidays knew how to form community with each other; and I am proud of all the student leaders (formal and informal) who contribute to this community.”
Some of these students were able to get University support to create this community. Kriti Garg ’26, for example, received funding from the Davis International Center to host a ‘Friendsgiving’ dinner. Her event was specifically directed toward fellow international students, many of whom stayed on campus due to long and expensive travel.
“I felt really blessed that in my first year as an international student here, I had a lot of international friends, and breaks never felt lonely. I really wanted to create a meaningful experience for the international community on campus during Thanksgiving,” Garg said. “We would cook like a family, eat like a family and laugh like a family.”
Garg is a former staff Audience creator for the ‘Prince.’
With nearly 20 people and three and a half hours in the kitchen, Garg’s dinner featured a variety of dishes — including some with an international twist — such as butter paneer, BBQ cauliflower wings, and homemade Swiss rolls.
“At the end of the meal, we went around the table and talked about what we were thankful for, and a few people got emotional just feeling the love of a family after so long,” Garg said. “It was a wonderful night of games, laughter, and food — and the eventual food coma that rolls around in the spirit of the holiday.”
Maya Chu is a contributing Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please direct any correction requests to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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