For at least 20 years, small contingents of Brown University students have periodically undertaken the Ratty Challenge, which entails staying in Brown's main dining hall for a whole day from opening time to closing time (>12 hours).

There's nothing physically difficult about the challenge — the dining hall staff doesn't kick you out for staying too long or anything like that. The difficulty is more of a mental and logistical one, requiring that would-be attempters block out a whole day to just sit in the Ratty. The challenge has become somewhat of a bucket list item for Brown students, myself included.

That's why, when I noticed that my entire Thursday was free during reading period (the week before finals), I sent the following email to over 100 friends I've made throughout my time at Brown:

From: Alex Mazansky
Bcc: (114 people)
Date: Monday, December 8, 2025 at 1:57 PM EST
Subject: The Ratty Challenge

Friends old and new,

For the first, last, and only time, I will be attempting Brown University's esteemed Ratty Challenge this Thursday, December 11th, 2025. That's right: I'll spend 12.5 uninterrupted hours in the finest refectory in all the land.

Since you're getting this email, I'd love to have you join me for a few minutes, for a meal, or (if you're feeling particularly daring) for the whole day.

Logistics:

• Hours: The Ratty opens at 7am during reading period and closes at 7:30pm. Feel free to join/leave anytime - I'll be there the whole day
• Potential Ratty activities include: Eating, yapping, studying for finals, reminiscing on the good times, card games, napping, going mildly insane at being indoors for 12.5 hours, and whatever other activities my wonderful guests (that's you!) decide to bring along
• Meal swipes: For those not on meal plan and/or who can't otherwise find their way into the Ratty (wink), I do have a few guest swipes. Please let me know if you may need one.
• There is only one rule: Stay in the Ratty, no matter what. (This one is optional for you and mandatory for me.)

Hope to see you on Thursday as I check off this Brown bucket list item!

Yours,
Alex Mazansky

I was officially in for a ride.

A brief history of the Ratty Challenge

The earliest reference to the challenge that I could find online is a blog ↗ from December 2006, which says:

We have proposed to a group of friends a day of The Ratty Challenge. For those of you not in the know, "The Ratty Challenge" involves sitting in the Ratty (or for you more civilized folk, the "Sharpe Refectory") from opening till closing (7:30am - 8pm). For more information on its history, check out the cover story in the December '06 issue of Mythical Extreme Sports Monthly.

This seems to imply the challenge had been around for a while before the 2006 attempt, but for how long exactly?

Given that the Mythical Extreme Sports Monthly is almost certainly satirical, I asked several alums who graduated in the mid-1990s whether they knew about the challenge. None of them did, leading me to believe it originated sometime during the late 1990s or early 2000s. (If you have any info about pre-2006 occurrences of the challenge, please let me know.)

Regardless of when the Ratty Challenge first came about, it has since become a touchstone of campus culture. It's a common bucket list item ↗ and point of reflection ↗ for graduating seniors, and was even satirized ↗ in a Noser piece from 2018.

Now, it was my turn to become part of the challenge's history.

Pulling it off in 2025

Dawn breaks behind the Ratty as I arrive at 6:55am.
I won't have another breath of fresh air for over 12 hours.

On the big day, I woke up to my alarm at 6:30am after extensive "preparations" for the challenge the night before at GCB. (What else is a senior supposed to do on a Wednesday night?)

I arrived outside the Ratty at 6:55am, swiping in right at 7am when they started letting people in. I claimed a table in the back left corner of the dining hall near the Kosher station, both for sentimental value (I used to eat breakfast there every day during freshman fall) as well as pragmatic reasons: this location is one of a few in the whole dining hall with readily accessible power outlets. These would be necessary throughout the day.

With the challenge officially underway, I sent out another mass email letting my friends know I was indeed in the Ratty, and prepared to spend the next 12 hours there.

Here are a few of the fun activities I made part of my Ratty Challenge endeavor:

Live-blogging

One common element of previous Ratty Challenge attempts has been the usage of live-blogging as a means to keep friends from near (elsewhere on campus) and far (not on campus) in the loop about challenge progress, and I decided to uphold this tradition.

My live blog covered the whole challenge, from the mundane (meal reviews of all the food I ate at the Ratty, stretch breaks, and lots of selfies) to the extreme (bent and broken dining hall silverware, being taught to use antiquated telecommunications equipment, and the disturbing lack of consistency in the Ratty's light fixture layout).

You can read the whole thing here ↗.

The digicam

I left a digicam out on the table all day and told each arriving visitor that they could take pictures with it anytime, without asking me for permission, as long as the camera didn't leave the table.

And oh boy, did they deliver. Here are a few photos from the day:

Artistic bread (with out-of-focus cameo by yours truly)

Lunchtime!

And the award for Most American Lunch goes to...

Selfie!

I've chosen to save the rest of the digicam photos for my wonderful guests, as thanks for taking time out of their day to entertain my crazy ideas.

This challenge wouldn't have been the same without all of you :)

The Very Exclusive Guestbook™

In a bid to entice people to visit the Ratty Challenge table, I promised my friends that anyone who came would get to write a message in the challenge's Very Exclusive Guestbook™ (i.e. a few pages of my notebook), to be preserved for posterity. I left the guestbook out all day for my guests to sign and promised not to read it until after the challenge was over.

It turns out that if you give my friends a blank page and an occasion to write, their messages span the whole range from sincere to random to profound. Here are a few:

The Ratty. Come for the food, stay for the ambience. How long do you have to stay in the Ratty before you become part of the ambience? Only time will tell.
(9:33am)

Alex - thank you for stopping me and encouraging me to pop by! I am actually leaving today for break, so this was a great send-off. My word of wisdom for anyone reading this is: sometimes things are hard and that's okay! There are times in life where the situation is just difficult, but the trick is making sure that that isn't always true instead of trying to make sure that it always isn't.
(1:39pm)

Your random tarot draw: The Fool. The start of a journey, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Perhaps more appropriate 7 ½ hours ago.
(2:39pm)

As a Vdub lover, the Ratty's existence has been an offense to nature, but for you Alex, I shall allow you to live. Happy Ratty Challenge!
(4:18pm)

I texted him "be there in 45!" at 3:45 PM...
(5:19pm)

If everything we do changes us just a little, I have been forever changed by the experience of sitting in the Ratty alongside Alex & company today. Which, generally speaking, happens fairly frequently, but soon will never happen again (except in my memory). Egg rolls.
(7:05pm)

Math nerdery

Beyond my guests' messages, the numbers tell their own story of just how successful the day was.

49 unique guests visited the Ratty Challenge table throughout the day. Of those, seven visited a second time later in the day, for a total of 56 individual visits to the table. My guests' total visit lengths (summing the two individual lengths in the case of repeat visitors) resulted in the following analysis:

• Total time at table: 62h 11m (equivalent to almost 5 additional Ratty Challenge-lengths!)
• Average time at table: 1h 16m
• Median time at table: 33m
• 75th percentile: 1h 8m
• 90th percentile: 2h 24m

The data I collected also allowed me to plot how many visitors I had at all times throughout the challenge:

Wow, my friends are dedicated! After 11:04am, I was always joined by at least 4 people until the end of the challenge.

For the bragging rights of my guests, I also made a leaderboard of who spent the longest at the table:

Congrats (or concerns?) to Chai, Aaron, Yi, and Jackie, each of whom stuck around for more than 4 hours.

So... what about the food?

Yes, I know the Ratty is a dining hall and all, but allow me to answer your question with another question: Was this ever really about the food?

(Okay, if you actually care about the food, the pictures of everything I ate can be found on the challenge's live blog ↗.)

Reflections

Final table selfie, 4 minutes before we were kicked out

Empty Ratty once again

At 7:45pm, I and 11 of my wonderful guests were (mercifully) kicked out by the Dining staff, marking the end of my Ratty Challenge.

As I took my first breath of fresh air after almost 13 hours inside, I considered my life choices... and was entirely grateful. The day's events proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am surrounded by a community of very dedicated friends. Their commitment to the bit made my Ratty Challenge experience one that I will never forget.

What I didn't do during my challenge (though it's not like I was planning on it) was get very much work done. Sure, I might have a CS final project due in a few days. But what will I remember in 10 years: that project or my crazy day in the Ratty?

So I say: No regrets.

With thanks to my friends Tyler Rose, Kelly Yan ↗, and Kevin Cox ↗, all of whose mischief and merriment — from hosting hundred-person tea parties in freshman year to encouraging spontaneous birthday kidnappings — inspired me to complete the Ratty Challenge in the manner I did.

Thanks also to my friend Jack Wrenn ↗ who provided additional historical details about the Ratty, and whose spirit of archival was part of the inspiration for this post.