Ivy League Eats Include Many Smart Choices

As the end of the semester draws near, many students—their meal plans largely untouched—scramble to get as much use out of John Jay and Hewitt as possible. However, with each swipe into the dining hall costing nearly $13—even for cups of hot chocolates or bowls of cereal—it is easy to understand why many freshmen feel less than satisfied with their meal plan options.

For Columbia students, the meal plan is the subject of much contention. The mandatory freshman meal plans, the smallest of which still includes 500 Dining Dollars and an average of 7.2 meals a week, force students to spend more time and money than many would like on campus food. “The meal plan forces you to purchase far more meals and points than you’ll ever use. I’m on Meal Plan Four and I still have fifty meals and three hundred points to spend in six weeks! I’ve been eating at John Jay far more than anyone should have to and there’s still not enough time to finish my meals!” Bracha Rubin, CC ’11, said.

Students also say that in a city full of restaurants where any variety of food is just a subway ride away, on-campus dining options are less important at Columbia than more isolated schools like Cornell and Dartmouth.

Joseph Heavey, head of Columbia dining services, said, “When we construct dining plans, we take into account the location of the university, the kitchen facilities available to students, the idea of fostering a sense of community and, above all the nutrition, health, and well-being of students. These are people away from home, many for the first time, and our responsibility is to make sure they are safe, happy, healthy and well-fed.”

A glance at the various meal plans offered at the other Ivies prove that institutional food plans don’t need to be bland. In fact, there are many different ways in which schools can feed their hungry intellectuals. From block plans—a fixed amount of meals per term—to unlimited come-as-you-please plans and even prestigious eating clubs, the possibilities are diverse.

At Dartmouth, the meal plan system is based exclusively on a declining balance, which decreases with each purchase of food. The plan compensates for the lack of food-retail options in the surrounding area.

Princeton dining is based on both unlimited, block plans, and eating clubs—private organizations students join by means of a lottery or by selection—that resemble “combinations of dining halls and social houses.”

At Harvard, a “house” system exists wherein each residential college has its own dining hall, while Yale and Cornell rely on multiple dining halls that cater to the entire student body.

Brown University offers a large variety of meal plans for its students to choose from—some which follow the block model and some which follow a weekly model. The University of Pennsylvania uses block meals.

Like the variety within meal plans, the cost of meals at different Ivies varies greatly. In most schools, the plans with more meals become cheaper with each meal. At Columbia, a student on the most expensive and largest freshman meal plan theoretically pays $9 per meal at John Jay. In comparison, students at Penn and Princeton pay about $7 a meal on the largest meal plan.

While Columbia cites its location in one of the world’s most expensive cities as justification for the high cost-per-meal—the highest of any of the Ivies—meals on Barnard College’s unlimited meal plan cost much less.

Acknowledging that students are unhappy with the current system, Joe Heavey said, “We are always looking for ways to make the meal plans more conducive to students’ lifestyles. To this end, we are considering allowing multiple meal swipes and all-day dining next semester.”

monica.varman@columbiaspectator.com