Meal plan manifesto

Barnard College is a small community, with brilliant professors and attentive staff. Its mission is to take in the young women of today and transform them into the experienced leaders of tomorrow. The custodians of this college strive to foster a campus community that supports this endeavor by encouraging, or rather, requiring, students to develop and defend their opinions. I have never felt that this was not the case at Barnard—until the recent events of this past fall semester. 

Only a few weeks before finals, students received an e-mail stating that, starting next fall, meal plans would be mandatory for all students. After a student uproar, the administration called a forum to ask for student input, and now students are being selected to form a committee to advise the administration during this meal plan decision process. But rather than ask for active participation in the planning process, the administration only listened to student input after their policy caused outspoken opposition.  So I ask, how can we be trained as the leaders of tomorrow when we’re treated like children today? 

And that is what this meal plan would effectively do—revert our lives back to adolescence, at the expense of both our stomachs and our wallets. Students’ dietary preferences will be severely restricted at a cafeteria, as compared to the plethora of grocery-shopping options in the neighborhood. Whether you have a commitment to eating organic and local, or a dietary restriction to eating vegan or gluten-free, your food choices will be severely limited if not all together eliminated in an Aramark establishment. This plan will especially have acute implications for our students that have life-threatening allergies that do not permit them to eat in a cafeteria that mass prepares food.   What’s more problematic, however, is that this proposed policy would have an effect that is counterproductive to the mission of the college: It actually would be detrimental to students’ health and growth. At 22 years old, you may never have had to cook for yourself, grocery shop, or learn financial responsibility when it comes to your diet.  Students will still be eating (all-you-can-eat) pizza, fries, and hamburgers most days of the week, rather than beginning to understand that tenuous balance between splurging and healthy eating and responsible spending. In a country that boasts one of the world’s highest obesity rates and one of the lower life-expectancy ratings in the developed world—not to mention the current state of our health care system—Barnard should be encouraging its students more than ever to be leaders in the health and environmental revolution, and specifically, to be women that lead by example.  

A couple of students—in true leadership fashion—took up the task of rallying students around the aim of “protecting our right to be off the meal plan.” Their method was simple—a Facebook group of which there are 640 members—and their message was simple: The way to campus community is through our hearts, not our stomachs.  These students, including myself, compiled a manifesto that objected to the proposed meal plan policy for five reasons: 1. The consumers should have a right to choose the product. 2. The new plan will pose a further financial burden to students. 3. The plan is “a thinly disguised financial decision that has little to do with community.” 4. It poses unnecessary inconveniences for commuters. 5. It is incapable of accommodating the dietary diversity of the student body. 

The Manifesto called on the administration to reverse proposals for a new meal plan and reinstate the current policy with a couple tweaks: Quad residents (due to limited kitchen space) should be required to have a meal plan but should be provided with more meal plan options, and students living in the Quad with food-related allergies should be excused from having to buy into a meal plan. The economics of the plan worked this year. They can work next year, too.  And fear not, Dean Denburg. BC students love the Diana and don’t need to be bribed with thin-crust pizza to use the building. 

This Manifesto was all but disregarded. Hopefully the voices of the group of 12 students selected to be on the advisory committee will not be. 
For Barnard College is indeed a small community, where students, professors, and administrators have to meet to find a happy balance between financial prudence and social satisfaction in order to foster an atmosphere that accomplishes Barnard’s mission: Take young women of today, and turn them into the leaders of tomorrow. To the student—take up and defend that mantra. To the administration—train us to be leaders by allowing us to lead our own lives, both on campus and in the dorms. Give us the respect to protect our rights and the freedom to be off the meal plan. 

The author is a Barnard senior majoring in Political Science.