Dalhousie’s tea-riffic drinking society

Hot tea means
comfort. A different kind of comfort than coffee or, say, vodka Jello
shots.

And while Orientation Week rears its over-excited head around the
campus of Dalhousie University, members of the Dal Tea Drinkers’
Society hope students can take a break from the bedlam of first
semester to take solace in the comfort of tea—whatever kind of tea
they fancy.

For Alison Martin, today it’s Earl Grey, into which she pours a
little milk, holding in her hand the blue cover of her American Natural
History Museum mug.

“I change it up,” says Martin, who started a medicine degree last
week. “I like chai. I like the regular black tea from Just Us, the
Ceylon.”

She stops. Ponders. “I am kind of indiscriminate with teas.” Then
she looks directly at me. “I’m not a huge fan of herbal teas.”

Martin started drinking tea as a child, when her parents would top
up the dregs of her supper milk glass with tea as they poured their own
after-supper mugs. “Maybe that’s why I’m short,” she says.

Martin’s been a Dal Tea Drinkers’ Society member since the first
year of her undergrad. She has served as president and, before that,
Tea Culture Rep, which she admits didn’t have a whole lot to do with
tea culture.

“I think they had originally intended it to be, if they had
meetings, someone would give a little presentation—[like about] tea
drinking around the world.”

But, Martin says, “I don’t think I ever did an actual
presentation.”

What she did do was coordinate with other societies, because apart
from the meetings, which aren’t so much meetings—a room spontaneously
booked in the SUB, an urn of steeped tea and an urn of hot water with
an assortment of teabags—the six- (possibly seven-) year-old Tea
Drinkers’ Society serves tea at functions for other Dal
Societies.

They have handed out tea and baked goods (crowd favourite: Russian
tea cookies—“I looked up what went well with tea and what I had the
ingredients for,” says Martin) to the likes of Stephen Lewis, David
Suzuki, Elizabeth May, Jack Layton and Alexa McDonough.

You’ll notice a political bend in those names. And the tea society
is, technically, about “progressive values,” according to the official
description on the DSU society webpage. But the thing Martin likes
about the Tea Drinkers’ Society is the mish-mash group tea brings
together.

“You would think it would be all the artsy students, but I’m
Neuroscience/Microbiology,” she says. “It brings in a really
interesting and diverse crowd and they always find something
interesting to talk about.”

Diversity—or maybe randomness—is very much the name of the Tea
Drinkers’ game.

The meetings aren’t regular, the members—there are about 500, in
roughly equal proportions of men to women—are from all over the Dal
departmental map and the official society mandate is loose. No, I mean
really loose.

Partly, it’s about the “proliferation of a uniquely Dalhousian tea
culture.”

What’s that, I ask.

Martin laughs. And doesn’t answer the question.

Partly it’s to advocate “social and environmental sustainability and
non-commercialism.”

How?

Under her leadership, the Tea Drinkers’ started using biodegradable
cups at meetings and society t-shirts were bought from a Canadian
company.

Martin is unapologetic about the, um, relaxed dedication of the
society to its mandate.

Tea Drinkers’ “isn’t as aggressive as some other groups.” Martin
says.

“I believe in that—you can have your values, but it’s not like
when people come out to have a cup of tea we’re going to make you join
Greenpeace.”

And, actually, members don’t have to come out to have a cup
of tea. They don’t even have to drink tea at all.

“You might need to bring your own streamed beverage, but, no, there
is no mandate that you must enjoy tea. Plus, there are so many
different types of tea, I’m sure you would find one you like.”

One might wonder: just what the hell is this society all about?

“I think the novelty attracts a lot of people,” says Martin (who
signed up originally because at the society fair in her first year one
Tea Drinkers’ Society co-president was at a booth with “this really old
portable record player, the ones kids used to have”).

There’s also this: tea, the mandate reads, “makes the general
goings-on of life a little bit better than they otherwise would
be.”

Do we really need to get picky about the details?

This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.