Last semester, studying faulty arguments I was given a chart that made me laugh. On one axis was the global temperature showing a gradual increase. On the other was the number of pirates world-wide decreasing as the temperatures increased. The two things have nothing to do with each other and so I laughed.
Recently I had reason to laugh again. Recently Julie Weber made the decision to create a requirement of 150 meal plans for all sophomores in residence next semester. In justifying this statement, she sighted the need to reduce student cooking as it is partly responsible for the atrocious number of fire alarms last semester. Now this is your time to laugh with me: she says that having more meals would alleviate the need to cook.
Let me correct her, it is not the number of meals we have that drives kids to kitchens. If you want people to not cook, there must be a better alternative. Right now a meal at TDR is, but generously, unable to satisfy. The way to make students chose TDR is not to box them in but to draw them in.
So, what is to be done? What is needed to make people chose TDR in a free and open choice over cooking? First, there needs to exist a choice. Without a competition of free choice of dinning services, there is no incentive for the food to get any better. Knowing that no matter how much I do not want to eat at TDR, I am still paying an average of $10 per meal, the kitchen may never need to improve their food. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Without removing this impediment of forced purchase, the food will not improve and I will continue my cooking in the dorms.
Secondly, the price should in some way resemble an actual price. In the real world, you do not lose the money you do not spend, you save it. In the mythical world existing in the housing and dining office, our currency has a shelf life. This simple correction to allow meal blocks to be transferable year to year would not only save students money, but would force an improvement in the food. The dinning services would have a direct link between their budget and the number of people that show up. To make sure no dollar is wasted, efficiency and quality would need to improve to stave off downgrading, just like any other food distributor.ÿ
Thirdly, students need to be conscious of how much money they are spending. Today the only measurement of TDR is a meal block, the same as the Tavern and Block Express. However the later can be purchased with Eagle Bucks at considerable savings, and so can TDR. When a student has no meal blocks, the policy is that a student may buy his way in for $6 at breakfast, $8 at lunch and $10 at dinner. Just like the $6 meals at the tavern should not cost a $10 meal block, why should a $6 breakfast cost $10? There is no difference in the food that I consume, so why is the student body being forced to bare the brunt of a meal system that creates an arbitrary pricing system? There does not seem to be a good answer anywhere you look. This will decrease the difference between TDR and the alternative of cooking.
Reinforcing an inefficient food system is not going to help draw people from the kitchens of their dorm to the dinning room. The only way to do that is with better food, which comes from reforming it in the three simple ways to better food. I am with you Julie Weber in spirit but your logic needs a bit of work. We don't cook because we are out of meal blocks, we cook because we can do better than the food at TDR. Fix our complaint and we will fix yours.
Andrew Jensen is a freshman in the School of Public Affairs.
