{"id":11812,"date":"2026-07-21T20:11:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11812"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:35:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T01:35:52","slug":"listen-dining-hall-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/listen-dining-hall-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"LISTEN: Dining hall connections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"LISTEN: Dining Hall Connections by Medill Cherubs\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F2365339619&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=1000&#038;maxwidth=800\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">[MANY PEOPLE TALKING AT ALLISON DINING HALL]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is the sound of Allison dining hall, the dining hall cherubs eat at while in the program. The space, which includes a variety of food options, is undeniably busy. But hidden among the clanking of plates and jostling of ice into plastic cups are small moments of cherub friendship. For Scarlett Ashford, the volume of the dining hall didn\u2019t deter her from an unexpected activity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SCARLETT ASHFORD: Jiayue and I sort of bonded over the fact that we both like Asian dramas, so we\u2019ve been watching C-dramas together in the dining hall at Allison. She\u2019ll put her phone up on the pepper and salt shakers to, like, prop it up, and then we\u2019ll just sit there and sort of giggle while we watch it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tessa Johnson found food as a bridge for people from vastly different places. Tessa is the only cherub from Missouri this year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">TESSA JOHNSON: I think that something that has been super fun has been talking to people about where we\u2019re from, and I feel like we\u2019ve done a lot of that in the dining hall, especially because I think so much of where you\u2019re from and your culture is tied to what food you eat, and so we\u2019ve kinda been talking about if this is similar or different to where we\u2019re from and getting to show people pictures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Discussions about the food served at Allison connected many cherubs, Sophia Ahmed said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SOPHIA AHMED: I think it\u2019s fun because we all tell each other, \u201cOh the dining hall is good today,\u201d or \u201cI would skip Allison today.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although not every cherub was watching movies in the dining hall, Scarlett got the sentiment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">SCARLETT ASHFORD: At least we can have this moment to just bond and strengthen our friendship through cheesy Asian dramas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">[CHERUBS AUDIO THEME MUSIC]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reporting for Cherubs Audio, I\u2019m Lucy Shirrell. See you next time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Music provided by @prettyjohn1 on Pixabay.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to how cherubs found more than a meal at Allison dining hall.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":11053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[699],"class_list":["post-11812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":699,"user_id":352,"is_guest":0,"slug":"shirrell26","display_name":"Lucy Shirrell","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d696ce6155f639e6a40db1716646767987d7f48a81f31dd182fc6f6e4a0b2fae?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Shirrell","first_name":"Lucy","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11812"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12827,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11812\/revisions\/12827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11812"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}