The Student Assembly's boycott of Dartmouth Dining Services will go ahead despite recent meetings between Assembly members and administrators in which DDS claimed they cannnot meet the Assembly's demands.
A motion passed at last week's Assembly meeting called for a one-day boycott to protest what the Assembly described as "insufficient flexibility on the part of DDS."
The Assembly has been lobbying DDS for two and a half years to change its meal plan policies. Last week Assembly Member Matthew Berry '94 and Assembly Treasurer John Steiner '94 co-sponsored a motion demanding the abolition of the mandatory meal plan that requires upperclass students to pre-pay $336 each term.
Since the passage of the boycott motion, the Assembly and DDS have attempted to resolve their differences but no immediate changes are planned.
Yesterday morning Vice-president and Treasurer of the College Lyn Hutton, Director of College Dining Services Pete Napolitano, Assembly President Nicole Artzer '94, Berry, Tyrone Thomas '94, Mark Waterstraat '94 and Nina Nho '97, the Assembly's liason to DDS, met to discuss the current situation.
"We entered into a dialogue and we came up with a proposed solution," Hutton said. Hutton suggested forming a task force of Assembly members and administrators to resolve the conflict. Artzer and Nho will draw up a charge for the task force, Hutton said.
But some Assembly members remain unsatisfied that progress is happening fast enough. Berry claimed that any changes proposed by the task force would not be implemented until 1996.
Following discussions with Napolitano, Berry revised his demands and is now asking DDS to increase the end-of-term refund limit from $100, to allow students to pay a fee to opt out of a dining plan and to revise freshman meal plans.
Napolitano says there are two components to the College's meal plan - financial and programatic aspects - that make it impossible to meet the Assembly's demands.
"The programatic component involves student life issues. This is a residential campus and the premises of community must remain intact for the communal good," Napolitano said.
Five years ago there was a fee to allow students to opt out of the meal plan but students were vehemntly opposed, Napolitano said.
"The financial aspect is that Dining Services must remain self-sufficient," he continued. Dining services makes a profit of around 1 to 1.5 percent which is then reinvested in DDS, Napolitano said.
"Dining Services needs to make a profit. I think that's the truth whether Pete [Napolitano] will admit it or not," Berry said.
Napolitano said he wants to make sure relations between DDS and students remain as open as possible.
"My door is always open. We don't have anything to hide," he said. "If anything comes out of this it's the fact that Dining Services should do a better job than it does about providing information to students."
Napolitano said DDS has made changes in recent years in response to Assembly requests.
"We extended hours of operation, we extended the value of MET [punches], extended the hours of dinner, we put in services like a pay phone, condoms in the restrooms and vending machines," Napolitano said.
Napolitano said the political infighting in the Assembly has interfered with the negotiations and made communication between DDS and the Assembly difficult.
"It's been very, very confusing," Napolitano said. "I don't know who in the Student Assembly I'm working with." He said Kenjii Sugahara '95, the 1997 class council, Artzer and Nho and finally Costalas and Waterstraat all spoke with him at different times.
Napolitano said he told Costalas and Waterstraat, who head the boycott comittee, that he would not meet with them unless Artzer and Nho were present, as Hutton advised.
In a letter to The Dartmouth both Costalas and Waterstraat said Artzer "instructed Napolitano to cancel the meeting and to refrain from meeting with SA representatives until after the boycott."
"The internal workings of the Student Assembly should not be aired publicly," Napolitano said. "I don't know why DDS is in the middle of all this. I guess the issue was the straw that broke the camel's back."
Berry and Waterstraat both said Artzer's actions undermined their attempts to reform the current meal plan system.
"She is acting as a stooge for the administration," Berry, who called for Artzer's impeachment, said. "We were on the verge of progress until she sabatoged our efforts."
