Food, sleep and shelter are the three things necessary for human survival. While most of us probably don't get as much sleep as we should, and some of us might not be very happy with this week's room draw results, it's the food thing that really concerns me.
Since College administrators announced the overhaul of our current la carte dining plan, quiet grumbling has been heard around campus from students who saw their new options and weren't very happy. (If I get the 14 meals-a-week plan I still only have $1.79 a day in my Declining Balance Account to spend? What do I do for the other seven meals a week?) We had largely kept these complaints to ourselves until last week. In just over 24 hours, a Facebook group called "1,000 Students Against the New Dartmouth DDS Meal Plan" quickly grew from one fan (me) to more than 1,000. These students vented their frustrations to each other, posted their ideas and suggestions and explained to friends why this new meal plan does not accommodate our eating habits and budgets. They spread the word to the rest of campus through BlitzMail, Facebook chat and Bored at Baker (not that you or I go on there). Finally, some of these dedicated souls demonstrated outside the Hopkins Center on Tuesday, asking President Jim Yong Kim to give the student body greater freedom of choice with regard to their dining options. Yet despite this torrent of student outrage over a dining plan that charges us more and gives us less, the administration appears to remain unmoved.
I'd like to offer my suggestions for a new meal plan, one that understands how college students eat and addresses our needs. After communicating with students on the Facebook page and in real life, I've found three major propositions that have widespread student support.
- Fewer all-you-can-eat meals, more DBA.
The consensus among all the students I've spoken to is that they tend to eat many small meals and snacks throughout the day a coffee here, a yogurt there, a sandwich on the run. In other words, based on the eating patterns of the average Dartmouth student, all-you-can-eat just doesn't make sense for any meal except dinner. The College should offer plans that include a smaller number of all-you-can-eat meals with a vastly increased amount of DBA. Perhaps they could even implement a meal plan that is entirely flex dollars, where students can pay the cost of an all-you-can-eat meal when they feel like it, and eat elsewhere when they don't similar to the Homeplate brunch system. This would bring the meal plans closer in line with what we have now while still satisfying the College's desire to encourage students to eat at the Class of 1953 Commons.
- Talk to us like we're grown ups.
I think we can all agree that one of the biggest issues with this meal plan is the lack of transparency with which it was created. By veiling the reasons for the meal plan behind unsupported anecdotes of starving financial aid students (as a student on financial aid myself, I eat quite well on the Green plan and usually have at least $100 in DBA left over each term), administrators seem to ignore the fact that new meal plan will be even worse for students on a limited budget. Because financial aid pays for the Big Green plan, these students will be forced to eat 20 out of 21 meals in '53 Commons. Many wealthier students, meanwhile, will have the luxury of preserving their freedom of choice by getting smaller meal plans and eating off campus more often. This dynamic would only worsen the class division already too apparent on campus.
- Make healthy food cheaper.
If the College is really so concerned that students on financial aid are unable to afford healthy food, there's a very simple solution. We all know that DDS charges way above market prices for everything. Instead of charging too much for all food, why not subsidize less expensive healthy options by increasing the price of unhealthy foods?
These are only a few of the suggestions that students have offered. Many more can be found on our Facebook page and the links posted there. I sincerely hope that the administration cares enough about students to realize that these "SmartChoice" plans are really not smart choices at all they will force students to binge during some meals and skip others in order to avoid paying DDS prices for food out-of-pocket. If Kim takes his commitment to the Dartmouth community seriously, he must surely see what we see: Over one quarter of us have serious problems with this meal plan, and something needs to change.
