You who are no longer willing to submit to unfair rule, arise! The time has come to end the injustices, to throw off the shackles, to reform the bitter monopoly that nourishes us all. Look toward the future, friends, and lend me your stomachs for the fight to change the ever-formidable Princeton University Dining Services!
Lest I be labeled ungrateful, I’ll begin this call for dining reform by expressing gratitude for the changes that have already taken effect. Dining hall food is unquestionably better than it was last year, even in the comparatively neglected Wilcox and Wu halls. Whitman’s Community Hall and the overhauled Rocky-Mathey servery feature a selection that would have been unimaginable a year ago.
Nonetheless, improving the quality of the food does nothing to reform the system through which students are coerced to buy that food. All underclassmen are obligated to purchase a meal plan, and it’s not clear that this is mandate is justified to begin with. I can follow the reasoning behind requiring all freshmen to have meal plans; students away from home for the first time should not have to worry about finding food in an unfamiliar environment. By sophomore year, however, students are well adjusted to college life, and the prospect of finding food outside the dining hall is no longer daunting.
But most underclassmen would probably purchase a meal plan even if given the option not to, meaning that the more unforgivable flaw with the dining system is the lack of choice. There are currently only three meal plans for us to choose from. The smallest is the 190-meal-per-semester plan, which averages out to about 13 meals per week. Athletes, local students and others who routinely spend chunks of time off campus are bound to have surplus meals, especially if they’re not accustomed to eating breakfast.
I know many students who finished last semester with more than 30 meals left despite having purchased the smallest plan. A series of new, smaller meal plans would be well received. At the very least, the 95-meal plan that upperclassmen in four-year colleges can choose should be offered to underclassmen.
The administration deserves to be commended for its commitment to adding dining options for upperclassmen. In the last year, it has worked with the eating clubs to create joint meal plans, established the four-year colleges and given every upperclassman two free dining hall meals per week. But during the same period, dining options for underclassmen have decreased. Starting last fall, the iron fist of Dining Services replaced the popular weekly plans with the mammoth unlimited meal plan.
The proliferation of options that I hope for ultimately encompasses more than an increase in the number of available meal plans. I’m also calling for more freedom in what can be purchased with a meal. Currently, the only option besides the dining halls is late meal at Frist Campus Center. I need hardly add that late meal is a monetary scandal; the average price of a meal on a block meal plan is over $10 but we are only allowed to spend $6 or $7 on late lunch and dinner, respectively. Dining Services should either raise late meal allowances to the cost of the meals or offer the student body an explanation for this discrepancy.
Furthermore, the problem of unused meals would be partially alleviated if students were allowed to use meals in the cafes in the E-Quad and the Carl Icahn lab. For many students, especially engineers, these cafes are far more convenient on a given weekday than the dining halls. Students with classes at 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in the E-Quad do not have time to walk to Rocky to eat lunch, and the E-Quad cafe is perfectly situated to serve them. Several of my engineer friends eat there anyway, effectively paying for their lunch twice.
As I hope I’ve demonstrated, there are many ways in which the dining system could be made more convenient for underclassmen. The potential options discussed here — additional meal plans, late meal reform and permission to use meals at the cafes — would be easy to enact and would immediately affect students’ lives.
There has been speculation on this page that the administration’s policy of adding options for upperclassmen is an undercover attempt to overthrow Prospect Avenue. If the administration continues to neglect basic improvemets for underclassmen dining, it will be further evidence that Nassau Hall cares more about doing battle with the eating clubs than it does about bettering our options.
Michael Medeiros is a sophomore from Bethesda, Md. He can be reached at mmedeiro@princeton.edu.
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