My experience with Eating Alone

By Heng Choon Peng

Fourth year, Psychology Major


DARE TO EAT ALONE: Choon Peng (right) during the event at the NUS Arts canteen

When I first received the email to write an article on the student-run campaign “Eating Alone in the School Canteen” (or “Dare to eat alone”, in short), my first thought was “Oh no, not again!” But considering that the campaign was created to raise the awareness over the social stigma of eating alone, I recognised that having more publicity was actually good for us, only that we didn’t expect that much media interest.

The campaign was borne out of the intentions to help those who had the fear of eating alone in the school canteen. Statements like “I’d rather not eat than be seen eating in the canteen alone”, “I packed my lunch and pretended to do work when in reality I didn’t want to be seen eating alone” probably didn’t strike a chord with most of us. But to be seen eating alone does pose a real problem to some people. We wanted to put across the views that “eating alone is okay” and those eating alone shouldn’t be regarded as anti-social or as losers.

So our group composed of Jude Alphonsus Tan, Sonia Oh Ting Wen and myself came up with a Facebook event on 19 January 2011 to get 100 people to wear the shirt “I dare to eat alone” to encourage people to be open about eating alone and to show their support for it. We also encouraged those who had never tried eating alone to have a taste of it on the event day.

Prior to that day, the campaign had attracted 154 supporters on Facebook and the attention of the local newspapers, The Straits Times, as well as several school publications. On 19 January itself, we sold 50 out of the targeted 100 shirts.

We were not disappointed with the turnout, as the campaign was after all a purely student-run initiative and it was certainly no easy task to accomplish. To us, it was a feat worth remembering. As we looked back at the days of preparations, it was definitely an experience of a lifetime to run a campaign for a social cause. The awareness has been created, and now we hope others can build on this, so that more people will gain the confidence to eat alone when they need or want to.

1 February 2011