At Other Colleges, No Starving Menus

As Harvard students continue to find themselves faced with recurring pasta dishes and roast chicken for nights on end, students and representatives from other universities said that their dining services are handling the increase in world food prices differently.

Karen J. Dougherty, director of communications for Yale University Dining Services, said Yale’s food vendors are indeed raising their prices for the university. But high prices, she said, have not significantly changed dining at Yale.

“We’re not eliminating from the menu,” Dougherty said.

Yale junior Charlie C. Milner said if dining has changed, it has been for the better.

“They expanded the sustainable food program in all the college dining halls,” Milner said.

Even though organic and free-range food products are more expensive, Yale has not reduced the frequency of these items, according to Dougherty.

“We are running into a lot of trouble with the same issues, like fuel charges and commodity prices,” said Megan O’Neill, associate director of restaurant operations at Boston College (BC). O’Neill specifically referenced flour and milk prices.

Food prices have increased 75 percent since 2005, according to a recent article in The Economist.

At BC the increase in food prices is directly passed on to the students and does not diminish the food’s quality.

The college has “a little more leeway than Harvard,” O’Neill said, because BC students pay only for what they purchase and eat at each meal.

If students request certain foods, “we just have to charge a little bit more for it,” said O’Neill.

BC freshman Alex C. Carpenter said he has not noticed any menu changes, including in costs. Prices in dining halls “haven’t changed from semester to semester,” Carpenter said.

The increase in food prices seems to be leaving an especially poor taste in the mouths of Harvard students as Harvard Dining Services (HUDS) finds itself constricted by the soaring prices and its strict budget.

“They used to have different kinds of pasta,” said Anthony J. Carlson ’09, “but now they have one kind of pasta and always have brown rice. Are we supposed to put the pasta sauce on the rice?”

HUDS must work within a given budget that is determined in the winter prior to the school year, said Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06, former chair of HUDS student advisory committee.

“Given the limited time and resources they have, HUDS doesn’t get to set what the board rate is,” said Chadbourne.

Chadbourne said HUDS can request what they would like to charge, but the Faculty of Arts and Sciences must approve the figure.

“My understanding,” said Chadbourne, “is [HUDS] is sometimes constrained by what FAS thinks [HUDS] needs.”

HUDS spokeswoman Crista Martin did return requests for comment by press time.

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.