May the Outsiders Starve

A few weeks ago, I found myself discursive as the resident authority on burglary and subversion.  I had a friend from high school visit for a weekend in lovely Cambridge.  After I brought her around the yard and showed her the Square, the hunger struck. Of course, the average college budget precludes eating every meal at a taqueria or trattoria. So rather than follow the Donner Party’s grisly lead, we had to resort to lawlessness.

Harvard’s universal unlimited meal plan allows freedom from worries concerning finite “credits” for busy students.  At many other schools, students are faced with a set of dining limits.  Boston College’s main meal plan gives their students $1,995 for dining to spend at will over the course of each semester.  New York University offers a selection of meals per week or meals per semester for the buffet-style dining halls with a semesterly allowance (much like our Board Plus) for café-style establishments   Under these plans, students have to keep a constant tally of their consumption, perhaps one concern too many for a student body already stressed.

However, other schools’ dispensation plans also let students more easily feed their visiting friends, spending either a meal credit or dining dollars to prevent that inhospitable choice between hunger, cannibalism, and larceny. Yes, Harvard does allow students to purchase a guest meal at their residential dining halls, but at an exorbitant price.  Students or their friends can use cash, Board Plus, or Crimson Cash to pay $7.88 for breakfast, $11.03 for lunch, and $13.65 for dinner, as well as $5.57  for continental breakfast (the morning equivalent of Brain Break).  $13.65 for dining hall provender?  We would fare better at Au Bon Pain or Bartley’s Burgers, where a decent or better meal can be had for less than ten dollars.

These high prices actually have a net negative economic effect on dining services’ balance sheet. Overpriced food forces students to sneak their friends into the dining hall, thus causing a direct loss for HUDS, already facing apparent financial woes in light of rising food prices.  If HUDS were to sell dining hall meals at cost—instead of gouging guests—compliance with the payment affordable system would certainly be greater. 

However, there exists an even better solution, considering that students may still subvert a cheaper payment plan and sneak their guests in.  Several other schools offer a system of guest meals on the meal plan.  Simmons College  across the river, as well as larger institutions like Villanova  and Georgetown University,  allot a number of guest swipes for their dining halls to their students. 

Understandably, Harvard will not wish to apply the “unlimited” standard to guests (surely my friends in the area would show up thrice a day), but all I ask for is a number of get-out-of-hunger-free passes for visitors stopping by our delightful university. That would surely let me hang up my burglary skills for good and fill my friends’ stomachs instead.


Jeffrey J. Phaneuf ’10, a Crimson editorial comper, is a history and literature concentrator in Dunster House.