HUDS Answers Student Concerns

In an open meeting with the Undergraduate Council (UC) yesterday, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) executive director Ted Mayer addressed the recent House-list uproar concerning the quality of dining hall food.

Armed with a PowerPoint presentation and baskets of brownies, Mayer discussed Harvard’s mandatory meal plan, upcoming menu changes, and the need for better communication between students and dining services management.

According to UC President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09, the council invited Mayer to speak, hoping his presentation would help the UC decide what measures to push for in campus dining.

Mayer said that HUDS was surprised by the intensity of student complaints, since feedback through dining hall comment cards had been largely positive.

“The anger and frustrations that students felt about these issues caught us off guard,” Mayer said.

Mayer said that students seem to have forgotten about the instutionalized methods of communication with HUDS—which, in addition to the feedback cards, include the HUDS student advisory committee and the HUDS Web site. Mayer added that he would like a group of students to help revise the annual HUDS survey.

“How do I know what your interests are?” he said. “How do I reach you, and how do I ask you to reach us without you feeling that it’s unnecessary?”

An unexpected rise in food costs this past fall caused HUDS to phase out products like whole wheat bread and brown rice. Mayer said HUDS carefully chose which products would be removed from dining halls.

“We didn’t just do it willy-nilly, but because people weren’t eating” the items, Mayer said.

But he conceded that HUDS may have made some mistakes.

“Some of the cuts were overzealous and, quite frankly, unnecessary,” Mayer said.

HUDS has made additions in the past week that added costs, “but not too much,” Mayer said, adding that the beginning of the spring menu on Wednesday will usher in Monday-night Shanghai lettuce wraps and a recurring make-your-own-pudding bar.

According to Mayer, the meal plan at Harvard is inefficient. “We can save six million bucks if we have four Annenbergs,” he said.

But Harvard’s relatively dispersed House dining setup has been integral to student experience, Mayer said, citing last year’s Committee on House Life dining report.

During a question-and-answer session after the presentation, students asked Meyer about everything from the new dining hall televisions (“There’s no real appeal to me, personally. I’m not watching Saturday Night Live on it,” Mayer said) to the varying availability of spoons in House dining halls.

Quincy House UC Representative Tamar Holoshitz ’10 said she found Mayer’s presentation informative.

“It cleared up a lot of my own questions,” she said. “I hope they include this information on their Web site and get it out to students.”

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