A Palatable Vision, at Last

A few weeks ago, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) proposed, during the Committee on House Life (CHL) meeting, the possibility of a “flexible meal plan” that would improve the residential dining system to better accommodate students’ schedules and respond to student demands for extended dining hall hours. This particular plan would allow students to purchase 21 meals per week, while enabling them to use a number of these meals as Board Plus money that could be used in campus cafés such as the Lamont Library Café or the Greenhouse Café in the Science Center.

Though the plan needs further clarification, it nevertheless offers a creative solution to student demands for extended dining hall hours and also gives students more freedom to make better use of their dining hall money.

Adopting the “flexible meal plan” would allow students who have class during the lunch hours to stop, for example, by the Barker Center Café instead of skipping their (already paid for) meal in the dining hall or paying twice for their food. In addition, the plan would lessen the burden on over-crowded dining halls, potentially allowing Houses to scrap their inter-house restrictions. Students who now flock to Adams House to grab a quick meal between classes might chose, instead, to simply eat a salad in Barker Center. And the flexible meal plan could even reduce food waste by requiring students to indicate how many meals they plan to eat in the dining hall each week, which would enable HUDS to better estimate the amount of food that must be supplied.

Although House Masters and students are concerned that the increasing students’ options might hurt House life, the plan would only affect those students who are already skipping dining hall meals (or quickly running through their dining hall to grab on-the-go food). The group most likely to choose a meal at the Greenhouse over a meal in their House are the people whose schedules conflict with dining hall hours. Other students would probably go to their House dining halls anyway, avoiding the crowds in these smaller campus eateries. House dining halls would also still maintain their gustatory appeal: students would be able to eat as much as they like as opposed to smaller, limited meals in the cafés and campus eateries. Furthermore, the different opening and closing hours of these eateries mean that students tempted to have every meal outside their House would be unable to do so, because non-House eateries usually close before dinner or only open in the evening; these eateries also close during the weekends, thus compelling students to dine in their Houses.

These campus restaurants could even create diverse communities of their own: Science majors may gather in the Greenhouse after Organic Chemistry while Literature concentrators may continue their in-class intellectual discourse while standing in line in the Barker Café. These smaller communities would not take away from House communities; rather, they would develop in addition to the existing House communities.

Another criticism of the “flexible meal plan” is that students who mismanage their money would be left without meals until the end of the week. But limited meals are the rule in most colleges in America, and there is no reason to suspect that Harvard students are incapable of managing their plans.

Others might worry about the plan’s potential to deteriorate students’ diets by allowing them to live (if they so choose to) on fast foods such as pizza, French fries, and pastries. While certainly an understandable concern, students who would resort to this unhealthy diet are probably already eating similar foods in the dining hall. Eating healthy is an individual choice: if a person wishes to ignore his or her health then he or she will do so, regardless of whether this meal plan is implemented or not.

The “flexible mean plan” would not alter the House dining hall communities or significantly affect students’ overall eating patterns. Rather, they would provide students with a choice to allocate their money more effectively, and allow students who wish to eat dinner at a later hour to be able to do so in one of the campus eateries such as the Lamont Library Café. The plan still needs some clarification: will students have to communicate beforehand how many meals they would plan to eat in House dining halls? Would students be able to track their remaining “food money” or Board Plus money online? Would students be able to invite guests and just pay for their meal?

But despite these questions, the College should look into adopting this plan. After all, it is the only palatable one we’ve heard.



Ana I. Mendy ’09 is a history concentrator in Cabot House.