According to the Campus Dining Services office, “Participating in the residential dining program is one of the fundamental cornerstones of community development.” However, even if the strength of the house system rests largely on requiring residents to eat some meals in a dining hall, the University should let upperclassmen choose their desired number of meals past that minimum amount. The administration should ensure that upperclassmen residents of the house system are afforded some level of choice in their meal-plan selection rather than forcing them to purchase the most expensive, “Unlimited” plan.
Maintaining community feeling in the house system does not require residents to buy an unlimited number of meals. Many students on the unlimited meal plan skip breakfast and eat dinner well after 8 p.m., when campus dining halls close. It is unreasonable to charge students for such services that they will not likely benefit from. Moreover, the University impeaches its own goal by limiting the number of guest swipes each quarter to five in conjunction with the new unlimited plan. If it were legitimately concerned with fostering increased social contact among students, the University ought to return to finite meal plans and accordingly remove the unreasonable cap on guest swipes. While returning to the old plan may not help Aramark’s bottom line, it would provide greater value to students while continuing to build a sense of community.
Decisions relating to students’ eating should be left to students and their parents, and the university should hesitate to intervene, especially in the case of upperclassmen residents who know from experience what level of meal-plan they require. Some students find that the dining halls’ convenience, quality of food, or opportunities for socialization merit purchasing the most expensive meal plan. Others would cook in the dorm kitchen or order from Jimmy John’s. Beyond mere personal preferences, some students’ medical conditions severely limit their choices at the dining halls. The current system prevents those students from purchasing a plan that better fits the amount of food they actually eat.
In light of students’ varied preferences—and their parents’ finances—the University should give them much more freedom when choosing meal plans. To ensure students continue to eat some meals with their fellow residents, the University might require residents purchase a minimum number of meals—perhaps six per week. And, in the unlikely case that students’ demand for dining-hall meals decreases to a point where the current system no longer proves sustainable, the administration should look for cost-cutting measures before simply passing the expense onto students. With the cost of a college education on the rise, student residents should not be universally required to pay for a Cadillac meal plan.
— The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Editor-in-Chief elect, Viewpoints Editors, and three Editorial Board members.
There are flaws in this logic, especially considering what the university has done with finite meal plans in the past. As the upperclassmen still on finite meal plans know, the university charges students about $1000 more on each meal plan than what the meals they’re buying would be worth if bought without a meal plan. The university used finite meal plans to completely rip off its students, and if you bring it back, they’re just going to rip students off more. It’s a fundamental reality, and at the moment, the best scenario is an unlimited meal plan, even if it is rather expensive.
Also, the fact remains that the unlimited plan is still cheaper than the finite freshman meal plans that were in effect until this year.
Another problem is that when you buy a meal plan you are not buying a certain amount of food, you are buying a service. That means you are paying for the dining hall to be open, for staff to make that food, and for you to be able to get that food at any time the dining hall is open. Eating less food does not cost any less, the cost of food is negligible. The old system put the cost on people who ate more often, despite the fact that all people who go to the dining hall cost about the same to feed (again, because the cost lies in operation, not in food price).
The guest swipes are an enormous problem. I agree that if the university were trying to foster a sense of community, they would allow more than 5 guest swipes. Not only does this number not allow anyone who relies on the meal plan for food to ever eat with someone who is not on a plan, but if a sibling or friend visits a student, there are hardly enough swiped for a visitor to stay more than 2 days. Additionally, the fact that non-meal plan students are pretty much banned from the dining halls without being swiped in (regardless of whether they are planning to even touch the dining hall food) while people on meal plans are forbidden from taking all food out of the dining hall effectively segregates meal plan students from non meal plan students.