Pick a topic, claim a table, and eat with people who want to talk about it.
— chats hosted so far
Search for your school or tap it on the map to see its dining halls, hours and seating.
Name a topic, pick a time and a hall, or save a seat at a chat someone else is hosting.
Show up, find the table, and have the conversation you came to college for.
Hosting with an account means you can cancel or edit your chat later from any device, and nobody can post under your name.
Find your chat in the Browse tab.
Search any US university by name. We'll locate it on the map automatically.
You'll appear on the guest list. One seat per person — you can cancel any time.
An account lets you RSVP once per chat, cancel chats you host, and get reminders later on. We only ever use your Google account to sign you in — or post as a guest without one.
This is what other students see when you host or RSVP. You can change it any time.
This removes the chat and its guest list for everyone. It can't be undone.
Dining Hall Chats ("we", "us", "our") is a student-built platform at dininghallchats.com that helps college students host and discover in-person conversations at campus dining halls. You can reach us at dininghallchats@gmail.com.
When you sign in with Google: Google sends us your email address, your Google profile name, your profile picture URL, and a unique account identifier. We never see or store your Google password.
When you continue as a guest: We create an account for you that holds no email address, no name from any other service, and no contact information of any kind — just a randomly generated identifier and the display name you type. The session that proves the account is yours is stored in your browser and nowhere else, which is also why we cannot recover it for you.
Your display name: The name you pick when you first sign in. This is what other students see next to chats you host and chats you RSVP to. You can change it at any time, and changing it updates the name shown on your existing chats and RSVPs.
When you host a chat:
When you RSVP to a chat:
When you add a school or dining hall:
On your device only:
We do not collect your phone number, student ID, mailing address, or payment information. If you post as a guest we hold no email address for you at all. We do not run ads, we do not sell or share your data with advertisers, and we do not build advertising profiles. We do not use analytics or tracking cookies — the only browser storage we use is what the site needs to work.
We do not send marketing email. If we introduce chat reminders, they will be limited to chats you have RSVPed to or are hosting, and you will be able to turn them off.
Public: All chats, guest lists, display names, and school data are visible to any visitor of dininghallchats.com. There is no private mode. If you RSVP, your display name is visible to everyone viewing that chat.
Not public: Your email address, your Google account identifier, and your profile picture URL. These are held in our authentication system and are not shown on the site or exposed to other users.
Chats posted from a guest account are labeled "Guest" on the listing, so other students can see the host did not sign in. Nothing else about a guest account is shown.
Account records, chats, RSVPs and school data are stored with Supabase (supabase.com), a US-based database and authentication provider, on servers in the United States. Access to the underlying database is limited to the people who run Dining Hall Chats. Database security rules restrict writes to signed-in users and restrict cancelling a chat to the account that created it.
If you are located outside the United States, using this site means your information is transferred to and processed in the United States.
Chats and their guest lists stay in the database after the chat has passed so the listing history remains intact. Your account record stays until you ask us to delete it. Guest accounts that never posted a chat or an RSVP are cleared out periodically. Delete your account and we remove your account record, your RSVPs, and the chats you host.
| Service | Purpose | Privacy Policy |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database and account storage | supabase.com/privacy |
| Google Sign-In | Authentication | policies.google.com/privacy |
| Google Fonts | Typography | policies.google.com/privacy |
| Netlify | Website hosting | netlify.com/privacy |
| OpenStreetMap Nominatim | School location lookup | osmfoundation.org |
| Cloudflare / jsDelivr | Serving map and database libraries | cloudflare.com/privacypolicy |
When you use the "Add Your School" feature, the school name you type is sent to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim API to find its geographic coordinates. No other data is sent.
Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information under laws such as the GDPR or the CCPA. Email us and we will honor those requests. We do not sell personal information.
This site is intended for college students 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you believe a minor has given us information, email us and we will delete it.
Sign-in is handled by Google and Supabase, and traffic to the site is encrypted over HTTPS. No system is perfectly secure, so treat anything you post here as public and do not share sensitive information through the site.
If we make meaningful changes to this policy, we will update the date at the top. Continued use of the site after changes means you accept the updated policy.
Questions? Email us at dininghallchats@gmail.com or reach out on Instagram @dininghallchats.
By using dininghallchats.com you agree to these Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please don't use the site. These terms are between you and Dining Hall Chats, a student-run project operated in the United States.
You must be 18 or older and a current college or university student, or otherwise authorized to be in the dining hall where a chat takes place. One person, one account. Don't create an account for someone else, impersonate anyone, or open guest sessions in bulk to get around limits or a removal.
You can use Dining Hall Chats two ways. Signing in with Google ties your activity to an account you can reach from any device, and you are responsible for keeping that Google account secure. Continuing as a guest creates an account with no email attached, held only in the browser you made it in.
Guest sessions come with a real trade-off, and it is on you, not us: the browser session is the only proof the account is yours. Clear your browser data, switch devices, or sign out, and you permanently lose the ability to edit or cancel the chats you posted. We cannot restore a guest account or transfer it, because there is nothing for us to check an ownership claim against. If a chat needs to come down after that, email us and we will remove the listing ourselves.
Anything done through your account, guest or not, is treated as done by you. Tell us if you think someone else is using it. You may stop using the site at any time and ask us to delete your account by emailing dininghallchats@gmail.com.
You keep ownership of what you post. By posting, you give us permission to display, store, and distribute it on the site so the platform can function. That permission ends when the content is removed, except for copies kept in routine backups.
You are responsible for what you post, and you confirm you have the right to post it.
Don't use Dining Hall Chats to:
Be a decent tablemate: show up if you RSVP, cancel if you can't, and keep the conversation open to the people who joined it.
Hosts set the topic, table, time, and seat count and are expected to actually show up. If your plans change, cancel the chat from the listing so guests are not left waiting. Attending a chat means entering a campus dining hall, which may require your own meal plan, guest pass, or payment. That is between you and your school. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any university, college, or dining services provider.
This is the part that matters most. Dining Hall Chats does not run background checks, verify student status, verify identities, or supervise any meeting. Chats posted from a guest account carry a "Guest" label, meaning the host did not sign in with Google and we hold no email address for them at all — weigh that accordingly. Chats are organized entirely by users. Meet only in the public dining area, tell a friend where you are going, and leave if you are uncomfortable. You attend at your own risk, and you are solely responsible for your interactions with other users. If you feel unsafe, contact campus security or local emergency services first, then tell us.
Schools, dining halls, hours, and map locations are submitted by users and looked up through OpenStreetMap. They may be wrong or out of date. Check your school's own dining page before relying on hours or locations.
We may remove any chat, RSVP, display name, or school listing, and suspend or delete any account, at our discretion and without notice, if we believe it breaks these terms or puts people at risk. Removing a guest account is a weaker remedy than removing a Google one, so we may restrict or turn off guest posting entirely, for everyone or at a given school, if it is being abused. Report a problem to dininghallchats@gmail.com and we will review it. We are a small student team, not a 24/7 moderation service.
Chats, names, descriptions, and school details are created by users, not by us. We do not endorse them and we do not pre-screen them. If something crosses a line, report it.
Dining Hall Chats is free and provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any listing is accurate. We may change or shut down features, or the whole site, at any time.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Dining Hall Chats and the students who run it are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss, injury, or harm arising out of your use of the site or any meeting arranged through it, including the conduct of any other user, whether online or in person. Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability to you is limited to $100. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, in which case they apply to the maximum extent allowed.
You agree to cover any claims, losses, and reasonable legal costs that arise from your use of the site, your content, or your violation of these terms or of anyone else's rights.
We may update these terms. The date at the top shows the latest version. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law rules. Any dispute that cannot be worked out by email will be handled in the state or federal courts located in California, and you agree to that jurisdiction.
Email dininghallchats@gmail.com or reach out on Instagram @dininghallchats.
Dining Hall Chats exists so that nobody has to eat alone. That falls apart if the site itself is the thing keeping someone out. We want every student to be able to browse chats, RSVP, and host, whatever they use to get online — a screen reader, keyboard only, voice control, magnification, or a phone held very close.
These are real gaps, found in our own review of the site:
These are on our list, and this statement will be updated as each one is closed rather than quietly rewritten.
This matters more to us than the checklist. If any part of the site stops you from posting or joining a chat, email dininghallchats@gmail.com with what you wanted to do and we will host the chat or place the RSVP on your behalf, by email, no explanation needed. We aim to reply within five school days.
Reports are genuinely useful to us, and we would rather hear about a small annoyance than have you work around it. It helps if you can include the page or window you were on, what you were trying to do, and the browser, device and any assistive technology you were using. Email dininghallchats@gmail.com or message @dininghallchats.
This statement is based on a self-evaluation by the students who build the site, using manual keyboard and screen reader checks. It has not been reviewed by an independent accessibility auditor. We are a small student team without a budget for one, and we would rather say so than imply a certification we do not hold.
Sign-in is handled by Google and Supabase, and our fonts come from Google Fonts. We do not control the accessibility of those services, though you can always skip Google sign-in entirely by continuing without an account.