Every week, I eagerly await Thursday night dinners at Homeplate, a.k.a. tuna skewer night. The delicious grilled tuna with teriyaki sauce coupled with a side of seaweed salad is the perfect meal. However, last Thursday night as I approached the grill, I noticed a small sign that read, "Seaweed salad sold separately in the refrigerator." For some reason, the price of seaweed salad has abruptly increased to $1.30 for a tiny cup.
According to Caleb Powers in his column, "Food for Thought" (Feb. 7), Dartmouth Dining Services is held hostage by rising food prices. It is admirable that DDS is concerned about paying its employees "livable wages" and keeping local farmers afloat, and it is understandable that DDS lacks the buying power of CVS. Yet, students should not have to pay for DDS' lack of market power. There is no reason to hold students captive by the monopoly that is DDS with its constant price increases.
Instead of allowing DDS to completely control the fate of our pockets, if Dartmouth were to rent out dining locations to the highest bidders, competition would drive down the prices to students and the rent would provide Dartmouth with a solid stream of money. This would also solve another problem caused by Dartmouth's allowance for a monopoly to control all of dining services -- the complete lack of cuisine variety on campus. Yes, we can get an "authentic" burrito at the Hop, or one of those new paninis for lunch at Homeplate. But to achieve a true variety, one in which the foods actually taste different, a range of food companies should be allowed to establish posts on campus. By renting out dining locations to the highest bidders, different locations would provide the campus with a real diversity of foods, which Dartmouth should find appealing when considering its preoccupation with diversity. This practice is quite common among colleges -- Northwestern University, Lehigh University and Hofstra University are just a few that rent out their dining spaces to multiple institutions. How great would it be to walk into Collis and buy an Au Bon Pain sandwich or a gourmet crepe through the school dining plan, as students can at Penn?
If Dartmouth insists on allowing DDS to monopolize its valuable dining system, however, then DDS must change some of its current practices. In Powers' column, he mentions that a meeting between DDS administrators and the Student Assembly "is on the table," although no date in the near future is mentioned. In this meeting, DDS should not only consider rollover meal plans, as Powers suggests, but should also consider diversifying its plans. While I agree with Powers that a bagel and coffee should "not cost the same as a four-course meal," other university meal plans allow students combinations of set numbers of meals paired with set amounts of declining balance. The student body would be better fulfilled if some dining locations, for example, Food Court, cost a set amount for unlimited eating per meal, while other locations work on the existing pay-for what-you-eat system. This would better serve the needs of both big and small eaters alike.
Students are forced to commit to a meal plan within the first few days of each term, and therefore are locked into a pre-paid plan even if they are using less DBA than usual. Small eaters often face this problem, as they are wary of paying a $50 or $100 surcharge for the right to purchase a smaller meal plan. Instead of working on a pre-paid declining balance account, meal plans should start off at zero dollars and work upward, so students are not subject to the loss of leftover nonrefundable meal plan dollars, and small eaters are not penalized for purchasing smaller meal plans.
While I realize that the food at Dartmouth is of somewhat higher quality than at other schools, the system is extremely unfriendly to students, severely restricting our options and forcing us to pay more than we should.
