Draft:Mitchell Hall traditions

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This article was started from a graduate's recollections. If you ate at Mitchell Hall as a cadet, please add what you remember about meals, traditions, and incidents from your era. See also the building article: Mitchell Hall. New to USAFAPedia? See how to contribute.

Mitchell Hall, known to cadets as "Mitch's", is the United States Air Force Academy's cadet dining facility. While the building itself is documented at Mitchell Hall, this article covers the dining traditions, recurring menu items, and cultural events that shaped the cadet experience of meals there over the decades.

Recurring menu items

Several Mitchell Hall menu items recur across decades of cadet memory.

Mitch's Mountain

Mitch's Mountain was a dessert served at Mitchell Hall consisting of a tall conical mound of cake and ice cream — reportedly approximately 18 inches in diameter at the base.^{[citation needed]} The dessert was a notable enough item that cadets across multiple eras remember it specifically by name. Its preparation, frequency on the menu, and the years it appeared are details worth filling in from contributors.

Tuesday steak sandwiches

For many years, Tuesday lunches at Mitchell Hall featured steak sandwiches as a recurring item.^{[citation needed]} Whether this tradition continues, when it began, and when (if ever) it lapsed are open questions for contributors.

Steak and crab legs Fridays

Certain Fridays featured steak and crab legs as the dining hall meal.^{[citation needed]} The frequency (every Friday? once a month? specific occasions?) and the era this was served should be confirmed by contributors.

The smoking lamp

For a period whose exact dates need confirmation, smoking was permitted at the dining tables under a specific protocol called the smoking lamp tradition. The smoking lamp was understood to be "lit" or "extinguished" by announcement from the staff tower — the elevated platform where the Cadet Wing Commander and Wing staff sat during meals. When the announcement "the smoking lamp is lit" was broadcast over the dining hall's audio system, upperclassmen at the tables were permitted to smoke.^{[citation needed]}

The tradition incorporated the cadet hierarchy in a typical way: doolies (fourth-class cadets) at each table commonly bribed their table commandant — usually with a cigar — to encourage him to "light the smoking lamp" for the table.^{[citation needed]}

The smoking lamp tradition was discontinued at some point along with the broader cultural shift away from smoking on military installations. The exact date of discontinuation, and the era during which the tradition was at its peak, should be added by contributors.

Notable incidents

The Class of 1979 food fight

In the late 1970s — at roughly the same cultural moment as the release of the film Animal House (1978) — members of the Class of 1979 participated in a food fight in Mitchell Hall that received national news coverage.^{[citation needed]} Details that should be researched and added: exact date, what triggered it, scope of the fight, administrative response, and any cadets involved who later spoke about it on the record. Contemporary newspaper coverage may be found in the Colorado Springs Gazette archives or national wire-service reports of the period.

Other incidents

Add other notable incidents at Mitchell Hall — food strikes, organized protests, memorable speakers, fires, evacuations, anything that turned an ordinary meal into a story.

Dining hall protocols

Mitchell Hall meals have always operated under cadet protocols specific to the four-class system. These have varied across eras but generally include rules about which class can speak, sit, and eat at what times; how food is requested and served; and how meal periods are formally opened and closed.

If you remember the specific protocols of your era — the doolie knowledge required at meals, the way the meal was called to order, how seconds were requested, how meals ended — please add them.

Stories from the dining hall

Mitch's was the setting for everyday cadet life as much as any classroom or dorm. Add memories from your time eating there.

This section awaits contributions.

See also

• Mitchell Hall — the building itself
• Cadet Wing Commander
• Doolies
• Class of 1979