[825] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
An Open Letter on Campus Dining
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Cain)
Sun Sep 23 18:17:12 2001
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Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 18:15:17 -0400
Reply-To: "Documentation at http://web.mit.edu/beland/talk/talk.html"
<MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU>, Matt Cain <mcain@MIT.EDU>
From: Matt Cain <mcain@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
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Dining</title></head><body>
<div>Mr. Berlin:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Since the announcement of the proposed changes to the dining
system, I have read literally hundreds of concerned comments and
questions. I'm certain you have received many yourself. Here are what
I see as the main questions that need to be addressed before the
student body will accept anything resembling what was presented at the
DormCon meeting on Thursday (For reference, the handout can be found
at http://pj.mit.edu/DormCon/Dining).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Cost</b></div>
<div>All of the meal options outlined the other night had minimum
enrollment requirements of ~ $3,600 - $3,800 for freshmen and ~ $2,900
- $,3000 for upperclassmen. This is much more than many to most MIT
students actually spend on food. My my count, there are 16 weeks each
in the fall and spring terms (including holidays, spring break, and
finals weeks). If I may take myself as an example, I spend about
$25-35 a week on groceries, $25 a week on restaurants, and $15 on
lunch on campus (walker and food trucks). Adding on another $10/wk
just to keep my estimate conservative, I come up with a total of about
$2,560 for a normal 32 week period. If I was concerned more about
money, I could easily cut $30-40/wk out of my costs by eating ramen
and going out to Burger King and Hi-Fi rather than Miracle of Science
and Sicilia's.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>So, my costs would increase by between $350 and $1,250, depending
on my year. The financial aid office assumes I spend $7,500/yr on room
and board. If we assume that I live in one of the most expensive dorms
(Burton-Conner, McCormick, MacGregor, or Next) and pay $4,004/year in
rooming costs, that leaves me $3,496</div>
<div>to spend on food. Under the new plan, this figure would
necessarily rise to $3800 or so. An increase of $300 in the estimated
cost would hardly make up for the fact that as a freshman my actual
cost would have risen by over $1,000. The people this hurts the most
are those who now cook for themselves to save money, something that
really isn't an option under the new system.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Where does the extra money go?</b></div>
<div>If we have a mandatory minimum contribution and then don't eat
that much food, where does the money go? Does MIT get it? Do you get
to go on a really nice vacation? Do the contractors who failed to
tempt our palate get it? Will it go into the scholarship fund for
those who can't afford to attend MIT because of the extra $1,000 or so
it now costs? Will it be given to student governments to spend
improving student life in other areas? Will it be used to rip out the
spacious dorm kitchens which will now lay fallow and unused because no
one can afford to skip a meal and cook for themselves?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>The promotion of socialization</b></div>
<div>Socialization (an interesting term in this situation...) around
dinner time is a major tenant of this new system, but I fail to see
how the new system accomplishes this any more than the current system.
Now, students have the options of cooking in a group, cooking at the
same time other people do, cooking alone, going out to eat in a group,
going out to eat alone, going to the dining hall in a group, or going
to the dining hall alone. While the new plan certainly curtails the
first 5 options, it in no way stops people who want to eat alone from
doing so. It's just as easy to go down and grab a sandwich and retreat
to your room as it is to cook up some ramen alone and retreat to your
room to eat it. Hell, it'll probably be easier. If you look around
walker at lunch you'll notice that scattered among the tables of
people talking and socializing there are many, many tables where
everyone is sitting and reading a newspaper, destined to say noting
more to one another than "Is this seat taken?". I fail to
see how the new system would be any different, or even why it should
be. Shouldn't students have the option of NOT interacting with others
if they don't want to?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Fraternity meal programs</b></div>
<div>Many if not most fraternities have a house food program that is
open to other students like non-residential members or friends of the
house. These students pay several hundred dollars a term for the
ability to go and eat at the fraternity house whenever they please.
Will this no longer be an option for students? This could very much
become an issue when frats recruit freshmen as non-residential
pledges. Will the freshmen be able to go and visit their brothers for
meals more than once a week?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Rolling dinner schedules</b></div>
<div>Under the proposed plan, each residential dining hall would be
open for a minimum of 2.5 hours and dinner would be served from 5-10
PM. I see problems resulting from the fact that MIT is long and thin.
For example, if a resident of EC or Sr. Haus wants to eat some time
that walker isn't open, they'll have to walk 10 minutes to McCormick
or 20 minutes to Next House. By the time they've dome that, they could
have easily prepared a meal for themselves and probably socialized
more while doing that than they would trudging alone across
campus.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Language and Cultural Houses</b></div>
<div>The language and cultural houses have a strong community. Part of
this stems from the fact that they cook dinner with each other 5
nights a week. Elsewhere on campus there are less formalized but just
as much enjoyed cooking groups that happen among groups of students.
Some option like this needs to be preserved.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><b>Undergrad/Grad/Faculty interaction</b></div>
<div>This is always something that everyone insists is a good idea,
but no one really tries to implement on any permanent basis. What
would your plan do to promote this?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Learning to cook is a life skill</b></div>
<div>I know I feel more prepared to live on my own because I've picked
up basic cooking skills. If there was unlimited dessert being offered
I don't think I would have learned to make a cheesecake or a pumpkin
pie. It's better to give people the opportunity to learn to cook when
there are friends around to help them out then let them make it to the
real world an their own apartment and have them not know how to hard
boil an egg.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Alcohol</b></div>
<div>Many students (all of age, of course) enjoy an alcoholic drink
with their meal, be it a beer with a hamburger or a glass of wine with
pasta. This is easily done if people can cook for themselves or go out
to eat regularly. Will this be an option in the residential dining
halls? Back in the 80s when there used to be a mandatory meal plan,
you could buy beer with your card. Will that be an option now?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Late night hours</b></div>
<div>Will there still be late night food options? It should be noted
that many students don't consider 1 A.M. to be all that late...</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Competition</b></div>
<div>How will competition be structured? How many different
contractors will be providing residential food options? How will
`monopolies of convenience' be controlled? (i.e. How much worse need
the food at walker be to motivate an EC resident to walk to Next and
eat?)</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Quality</b></div>
<div>How can you guarantee that the quality will improve? It's very
easy to say it will go up, but can you give qantatative analysis that
this will work? Are there any other universities in our position
(5,000 Undergrads, urban area, large kitchen spaces in many dorms)
that have a system like the one proposed that actually works?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Healthy options</b></div>
<div>Can you give us written guarantees that there will be healthy
options available that are not bland? It's much easier to mass-produce
unhealthy food than healthy. It's also fairly easy to cook nutritious
food on your own and certainly far more cheaply than eating in a
dining hall.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Steak costs more than potatoes</b></div>
<div>There will be expanded vegetarian and vegan options, I know, but
the simple fact is that meat (if it's of any quality) is more
expensive than grains and vegetables. Will vegetarians have to pay the
same amount?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Dieting</b></div>
<div>Dieting is much easier when you are in control of portion sizes.
Having all-you-can-eat meals only encourages the freshman 15. It's
hard enough to find time to eat well at MIT, having unlimited portions
could make this even worse.</div>
<div><b><br></b></div>
<div><b>Athletes</b></div>
<div>Most sports are from 5-7, but not all. Ice hockey, for an
example, is from 7-9. Also some athletes want to take evening classes.
I teach a seminar that meets from 8-10. There are two people who play
a sport in the class. After practice until 7 or 7:15 they have to take
a shower and get ready for class, leaving them little time for dinner
until after class. Since they cook for themselves, this isn't a
problem, but if the last dining hall closed at 10 they would be out of
luck.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>What about small people?</b></div>
<div>Some people eat much less than other people. Will they have to
pay the same amount?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Food Trucks</b></div>
<div>Will the food trucks be on the card?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Area restaurants</b></div>
<div>Many area restaurants are already declining to the point of being
bars with food. How will this plan not exacerbate this trend?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Other restaurants</b></div>
<div>Could more restaurants be put on the card? Also, would these
restaurants use the meal points or the retail points? Meal points
would make far more sense and would encourage students to get the hell
off campus, something that isn't done enough...</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Who decides who gets on the card?</b></div>
<div>Will it cost restaurants money to take the card? Can any
restaurant in the Cambridge/Boston area take it, or just one within N
miles of campus? Will laundry rooms and soda machines be on the
card?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>What if it doesn't work?</b></div>
<div>What are the evaluation mechanisms? Is there a guarantee that if
it doesn't work we can go back to the current system or a third
system?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Other systems</b></div>
<div>You may have already considered these, but I think they need to
be addressed</div>
<div>1. A system where everyone has to have some meal plan with some
low minimum and then has the option of getting a bigger meal plan.
That way, you would know at the beginning of the year the minimum
income of the system without forcing students to buy meals they don't
want and won't use.</div>
<div>2. An opt-out system, like health insurance. Have students send
in a form if they<b> don't</b> want the meal plan. Inertia will be on
your side, as anyone who doesn't care will get a meal plan, and anyone
who cooks a lot or violently opposes being forced to make a commitment
of $3600 all at once can opt out of the plan.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Sorry for the great length of this, but there has been a lot of
discussion on the issue and I'm sure there will be more. Getting
responses to these points will be an excellent start.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
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</x-tab>-Matt Cain</div>
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</x-tab>mcain@mit.edu</div>
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