Hobson Dining Hall, which is set to open in 2027, will have an entire halal-certified station, according to Assistant Vice President of Campus Dining Nadeem Siddiqui.
“I think this is a great step for potentially even moving towards all halal dining — at least in one dining hall — so that Muslim students have that place of safety and security,” Zoha Khan ’26, the current president of Muslim Students Association (MSA), told The Daily Princetonian.
Leena Memon ’25, the former co-president of MSA celebrated the impact this expansion of inclusive dining will have for students.
“It’s nice knowing that there will always be an option for some sort of entree or maybe a meat dish that’s accessible and meets dietary restrictions, plus knowing that every step of the cooking process was overseen,” said Memon.
This announcement comes after years of discussion between Campus Dining and MSA to expand halal dining options for Muslim students on campus. Students who keep halal cannot eat pork, any form of alcohol or alcohol-containing product, or meat that is not properly slaughtered according to Islamic belief.
Siddiqui and Campus Wellness Dietitian Puneet Sethi have worked with MSA to assess and improve halal dining options, including addressing cross-contamination and implementing a new Ramadan meal plan that grants students two additional meal swipes per day to pick up meals to break their fast in the evening (iftar) and the next morning (suhoor).
Campus Dining has also implemented programs to train staff on how to avoid cross-contamination and have implemented separate grills in dining halls. They also conducted a complete overhaul of Campus Dining’s recipe system, going through over 10,000 recipes to ensure that they were correctly designated as halal.
Memon said that she has noticed increased signage indicating which options are halal and increased efforts to avoid cross-contamination. At the same time, however, she has observed a decrease in the diversity of meat dishes offered — although she expressed excitement that Campus Dining recently rolled out halal pepperoni and chicken sausages.
Some Muslim students also identified decreasing unnecessary use of alcohol in recipes as a point for improvement to increase accessibility on the part of Campus Dining.
“Sometimes we will go to our dining hall, and there will be a vegetarian option or Halal meat option, but it’ll have alcohol in it, and that’s something that we just can’t eat,” Khan said.
According to Sethi, Campus Dining is continuously reevaluating what they can do to increase Halal offerings.
Yahya Habib ’26, former outreach coordinator for MSA, chose an independent meal plan partially because of the lack of halal options. “I can’t consistently get a halal meal every day,” he said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “Why should my payment go towards dining if I can’t eat every meal?”
Habib explained that it was difficult and time-consuming to assess every day which dining hall would have a halal option, as sometimes options listed on the menu as halal would not have a halal marker. This would require him to ask dining hall staff, who were not always sure if the option was halal. “It gets annoying if you intend to have a meal there, you used your swipe, and now it’s wasted,” Habib said.
“We need to do a better job to confirm that what is being posted is accurate,” Siddiqui said. He explained that many websites and apps that contain dining hall menus scrape information from Campus Dining’s menu management system and are not always up-to-date. He said that the most up-to-date information is posted on the Campus Dining website.
According to Memon, Campus Dining used to email menus to MSA laying out the halal meal offerings for each week. Siddiqui said that Campus Dining stopped this practice after the amount of halal options increased, but he added, “if that helps our students to make decisions on where to eat and what to eat, we will make that happen.”
For some students, the best way to increase access to halal options would be to implement a fully halal dining hall.
Khan said, “It would be so immensely helpful to not have to go through the entire process of going through all the menus on the website, checking to see if they’re serving halal meat, and if they’re serving halal meat, is it in touch with alcohol?”
Memon agreed. “Muslim students on campus would hugely benefit from having a halal dining hall on campus,” she said, citing community-building, routine, and continuity as reasons it would be beneficial.
When asked if Campus Dining is considering implementing a fully halal dining hall, Siddiqui declined to commit to the idea, saying, “we want inclusivity. We don’t want separation.”
He added, “We should be able to eat together. Princeton has to bring people from all different backgrounds to one table.”
Siddiqui did draw parallels to the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) which he explained operates through Hillel, an independent, international campus Jewish organization. Campus Dining operates the CJL dining hall. He elaborated that kosher dining has more regulations than halal dining, including separate kitchens for meat and dairy, which is why a kosher dining hall is necessary. He emphasized that students who keep kosher can always request a kosher meal at the residential college dining halls.
Ariyan Sajid ’25, former MSA treasurer, said that a halal dining hall would not be exclusive. “I think it’d be good for everyone, and it would overlap and include a lot of other people’s dietary restrictions,” he said.
The new halal-certified station at Hobson dining hall, as well as a separate allergy station for students with severe allergies, are part of efforts to increase food access within the current residential college dining system.
While Khan said that she was grateful for the improvements made so far, she expressed that she wishes there was space for Muslim students to meet and cook together.
“I could go on and on and on and on about how Muslim students have to sacrifice their faith in order to be a student here. Having a space where Muslim students feel as if they can just be safely within their identity, where they can gather together in community, would be so, so crucial,” she said.
“I really appreciate Campus Dining, specifically in how receptive they’ve been in terms of halal food,” Khan added. “I hope to see that sort of engagement from other parts of the University in terms of other aspects of Muslim life.”
Hannah Gabelnick is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Buffalo, N.Y.
Emily Leon is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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