To the Editor:
I find the Student Assembly's website for voting on the Dartmouth Dining Services issue very troubling. The choice voters see for "eliminating DDS" is full of dire predictions of students "cooking for themselves" and other such gloomy options.
What the explanation of the option ignores is one of the fundamental laws of economics: Businesses will meet student demand for food. The only reason that there are relatively few dining options in Hanover today is that the DDS monopoly has a vice-grip on students' dollars. If those dollars were free to go to businesses in Hanover, enterprising businesspeople would be eager to meet student demand by providing the food we want at prices we are willing to pay.
With an $800 non-refundable DBA, DDS has the ability to raise prices to any level they want, since the only two choices students have are to pay for overpriced food or lose their money. But let local businesses compete on a level playing field with DDS, and I think we would find that they can cater to students' desires very efficiently.
Despite the predictions on the Assembly's website, the idea that closing DDS down would leave students without any realistic dining options is pure fallacy. In today's Hanover, spending on food is restricted by DDS' monopoly on student dollars, and so the number of dining options is limited. But if the College were to let those dollars to choose freely among local businesses, more options would naturally come to Hanover. Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a case where people were willing to spend money on a product and no one was willing to sell it to them.
