During a meeting with Dartmouth Student Government in early April, Dartmouth Dining proposed a new meal plan system for College students. The proposed initiative would have amended Dartmouth’s meal plan options to include three distinct iterations of the Ivy Unlimited plan — which currently grants students $250 in dining dollars and unlimited meal swipes at the Class of 1953 Commons. Under that same proposal, the most expensive version of the Unlimited plan would have cost $150 more and offered $150 more dining dollars than the current Ivy Unlimited option — which is priced at $2,447 — according to DSG.
The initiative sparked concern among many students — including members of DSG — for various reasons, including the fact that the changes would restrict student choice and improperly address food insecurity. Upon learning about Dartmouth Dining’s initial plan, The Dartmouth Editorial Board took particular issue with one provision: a version of the Ivy Unlimited plan, currently required only for first-year students, would be mandated for all non-seniors.
In an interview with The Dartmouth, senior vice president for capital planning and campus services Joshua Keniston revealed that Dartmouth Dining intended to strike the plan’s mandatory element. While we applaud Dartmouth Dining for reversing that mandate, the Editorial Board still takes issue with other aspects of the initial plan. As the College continues “exploring and looking for feedback” — an ongoing process, according to Keniston — we encourage administrators to think carefully about student needs.
The proposed plan began to tackle the dining issues Dartmouth students have long complained about — such as slightly increasing the value of meal swipes in some dining periods and expanding where students can use them — though it did not do enough to address more institutional problems, like food insecurity and disordered eating on campus. According to past reporting by The Dartmouth “a 2018 Dartmouth Health survey found that 81% of Dartmouth students said they were concerned they engaged in disordered eating, 30% worried they had lost control over food intake and 17% said food dominated their life.”
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, restrictive eating is one element of disordered eating. And Dartmouth’s current dining options — with prices so high and meal swipe values so low that students generally cannot cover the price of a meal with a swipe, other than at the Class of 1953 Commons — certainly restricts dining options. In fact, many places on campus have snacks, bottled drinks and fresh fruit that alone cost more than a meal swipe, especially during the breakfast and lunch meal periods, when meal equivalency values are lower. Alarmingly, the initial proposal only allowed meal swipes to cover one more dollar for breakfast and lunch.
While we applaud Dartmouth Dining for consulting with select members of the campus community, we would encourage them to go further. Campus officials should work with College mental health experts and professionals at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center to implement changes to campus dining that properly and holistically address the concerns of students with eating disorders and disordered eating.
As DSG aptly pointed out in their April 14 email to campus, “any changed meal plan must be structured so students can regularly eat at non-Foco dining locations, realistically allowing for meaningful student choice.” We agree: rather than modify the Ivy Unlimited plan, Dartmouth Dining should focus on ways to make dining choices less restrictive. If campus officials really want to tackle food insecurity and dining plan dissatisfaction on campus, they should increase the value of meal swipes and dining dollars.
We would also encourage Dartmouth Dining to keep the Collis Cafe open on weekends — a signature campaign promise of DSG president-elect Chukwuka Odigbo ’25 and vice president-elect Jon Pazen ’25, according to past reporting by The Dartmouth. Anecdotally, this would prove to be a highly popular policy change among the student body, one that would provide students with additional food options at a time when many non-Foco dining locations reduce their operating hours.
Moreover, we urge the College to provide more clarity on plans for a new dining hall. The Class of 1953 Commons is already overcrowded. Students frequently have trouble finding cafeteria seats amongst ever-growing class sizes, and lines for entry often stretch well beyond its doors. If Dartmouth Dining further funnels students into Class of 1953 Commons, this problem will only get worse. While Dartmouth Dining mentioned that its ultimate goal is to build another dining hall, there is no clear timeline for that proposal.
The editorial board consists of opinion staff columnists, the opinion editors, the executive editors and the editor-in-chief.
