Food Freedom

UPDATED: February 26, 2014, at 8:19 p.m.

I’ve been a student on campus for a little over a semester now, and I may have gotten breakfast in Annenberg a total of five times. It isn’t just breakfast that I skip; I often eat out or have a scheduling conflict and am forced to miss a meal. Out of the possible twenty-one plus meals I could be eating in Annenberg, I eat about twelve. The reason this is an issue is because we all pay for unlimited dining and there is no option to opt out. Given the high cost of the dining plan, Harvard undergraduates should be given more freedom in choosing a meal plan that suits their individual needs.

While unlimited food sounds like a wonderful paradise of buffets every day, the reality is not so dreamy. In the 2014-2015 school year, the meal plan contributed substantially to our annual bill, with room and board together costing $14,669. It is a large financial burden and for someone like me, it does not make sense to purchase all twenty-one meals per week when I only need twelve. Even the number of twelve meals is slightly inflated because I now have a higher incentive to eat in the dining halls because I have already paid for the meal. Anytime I want to eat out, I’m paying twice.

I understand Harvard’s goal of trying to “ensure that you can participate in every House activity on an equal footing with your peers” and it has some merit to it. Under this line of thinking, students who might be less financially stable now won’t have an incentive to eat less or feel left out of the dining experience, which admittedly is a very important part of our social lives. I can understand why minimizing social exclusion would be a top priority for a diverse, intellectually stimulating university like Harvard. However, this issue goes both ways. For the students who have spent the vast majority of their food budget on the meal plan, they feel either excluded or pressured to spend money every time their friends want to eat outside of the dining halls.

Additionally, I don’t think this is as large of an issue as advertised. Most of the students who might have an incentive to choose a smaller meal plan due to financial difficulties are covered by Harvard’s wonderfully generous financial aid program. As for any students who are not on financial aid, they currently have no choice but to pay the full amount even if they might not have the means to do so. This might be reasonable if everyone on campus who wasn’t receiving aid had boundless assets to spare. However, by only allowing the students in the middle one choice, the unlimited meal plan might actually be harmful to those that it was designed to help. I believe that the removed incentive to eat less is outweighed by the pressure the plan puts on those very people to pay for more than they need.

In addition to the high cost of uneaten meals, meal plan choice should be provided in order to give students more flexibility. There is nothing wrong with the food and service at our dining halls. I think that Harvard University Dining Services does a fantastic job operating each and every one of the meals they provide. However, everyone wants to switch things up every now and then. By forcing students to pay for every meal, Harvard is limiting the ways we can allocate our food budget. While the convenience of unlimited swipes is nice, many of us would trade it for choice and some savings on room and board.

The fix for this problem is quite simple: I recommend that Harvard offer tiered plans based on meals per week. Comparable universities offer a plethora of meal plans including zero, seven, eleven, fourteen, and yes, even unlimited meals per week. There is no reason why we can’t do the same thing. In order to address the University’s concern over students being on “equal footing,” I suggest that they continue to use financial aid to help low-income students and subsidize dining services for anyone who they deem might be inclined to opt out due to lack of ability to pay. Amid growing college costs, these changes will not only preserve Harvard’s inclusive spirit but also save many families hard earned money and provide some much needed freedom.

Jason Ge '18, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Canaday Hall.

This op-ed has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: February 26, 2015

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that room and board costs $14,115 for the 2014-15 school year. In fact, it would cost $14,669.