Caius to hold its first ever formal

Gonville and Caius College is to hold its first ever proper formal hall, coming after years of jibes from other Colleges, overly-salty soup, and meagre pizza-slices.

The college, which up until now has been reputed for serving up Cambridge’s worst college meals, will see a only slight change to its meal booking system to make way for the formals.

Students at Caius currently pre-pay a ‘minimum dining requirement’ at the start of each term, paying for 36 dinner-time tickets, but will now have the option of exchanging two of these 36 for a four-course affair, with students encouraged to wear lounge-suits, as they would at any other formal.

The new ‘regular’ formal – the first of its kind at Caius – has been rather comically described on Caius’ online hall booking system as “Formal-formal”, because with regular formal having happened every night of the week for years, the college’s catering team has no other vocabulary of describing it to students.

Want to go to Caius hall? No, really?

The meal, taking place this friday, amounts to roughly £8 for a Caian, with the higher price of £13 for a guest.

The change comes after months of campaigning from the Caius JCR Food and Bar representatives, Robbie and Barnaby, who were eager to relay the change to Caius students on the JCR’s Facebook pages.

Mystery-meat will be a thing of the past for Caius

The duo, known in college-circles as ‘Food and Bar(naby)’, were motivated to make the change after being sick of politicians not keeping their promises, which Cambridge’s students are no strangers to with bureaucrats prevalent in JCRs and student politics. They offer promises of ‘beautifully laid tables’, with no confusion over ‘what constitutes a salad’.

The pair told The Tab: “Students at Caius have wanted a more formal Formal for a while. Although our usual Formal Hall is a bargain, most Caians don’t invite people from other Colleges because the experience isn’t really comparable.”

“With our new formal Formal, we think we’ve created something that reflects what students want, and is affordable. That’s not to mention ticking off the ‘pudding forks’ promise from our manifesto.”

Caius Hall gaffes have been a regular sighting on Overheard at Cambridge

But while this may counter the College’s infamy for candle-lit-canteen food, the college still attracts criticism from students over its ‘medieval’ dining system, being one of the only colleges where dinner-time meals must be paid for in advance, which continues to penalise overly-zealous thespians, too busy focusing on their evening play rehearsals, vegans and lonely Math-mos, who quite simply aren’t famed for their table-conversation.

The change will no doubt be a well-received one for the college’s students, who’d previously been no strangers to watered-down soup, canteen-style mains and rock-hard flapjacks for dessert.

Isabelle hitting the nail on the head

They’d previously been locked out of the enjoyment of ‘formal-swaps’ with other colleges’ students, but now have the Caius to do so with these more competitive dining rights.