For years, complaining about the restrictive nature of the freshman meal plan has been as much a part of the first-year experience as tenting for basketball games and riding the C-1 bus.
Now, the University is considering making major changes to the board plan, which administrators have long considered a backbone of the East Campus living experience.
Potential changes include reducing the current plan of 12 Marketplace meals per week to as few as five-three weekday breakfasts or dinners and two weekend brunches-and expanding the food points system to restaurants on Ninth Street by next semester, said Jim Wulforst, director of dining services.
The current meal equivalency program-which allows freshmen to apply the cost of a missed breakfast to lunch on East Campus-will be expanded to West Campus next year, Wulforst added.
Such developments represent only a portion of the ongoing discussions about what, exactly, the purpose of on-campus dining should be, President Richard Brodhead said.
"What is the balance between a free-choice atmosphere and one that tries to promote more communal values?" Brodhead asked in March.
He said discussion for the past few months about the performance of ARAMARK Corp.-the University's primary food service provider, whose contract is up in June-has diverted attention from some more important issues.
Brodhead cautioned that the selection of a new food provider-which will happen by the end of April-will not be an instant solution to all the problems with Duke dining.
"The notion of ARAMARK as an inherently evil force is just simply not true," he said.
Brodhead noted that when he has asked students to name examples of better college dining experiences, they often cite an ARAMARK-run campus.
"If you act like the name of the contractor is the only interesting question here, you're just going to have the same old meal plan with a different name on the truck outside," Brodhead said. "We need to make sure we ask questions that go deep into the structure of dining."
A closer look
Everyone in the administration generally seems to agree that the dining situation for the past few years on East has been unacceptable.
"I presume that there's nothing in our [dining] arrangement that authorizes poor-quality food," Brodhead said.
Many students have also criticized the Marketplace for providing poor customer service.
The service may have suffered because the eatery's management was aware that freshmen had no other choice but to eat there every day, per the requirements of the freshman board plan, said senior Andrew Wallace, co-chair of the Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee.
"Never do I think dining services will ever structure a contract like that again," Wallace said.
Finances are of major concern in the process of selecting and contracting a new food provider.
But there are other considerations besides money.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask explained that dining services has an underlying purpose-it is a "social transaction, not just a financial one."
The all-freshman East Campus experience-which began in 1995-has always centered on the traditional idea of the entire unified class sitting down and enjoying a meal together.
But Wulforst dismissed that notion as overly idealistic, noting that the Marketplace seats barely 25 percent of the freshman class even at capacity, and one-third of the class skips dinner at the Marketplace anyway.
"Do we really need to foster a community feel anymore?" he asked.
The perfect solution would be to find an option that supports student communal dining while allowing for increased consumer choice, said Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs.
"There are creative alternatives we haven't even begun to explore," he added.
And that is where Ninth Street fits in to the overall dining equation.
Moneta suggested possibly dedicating particular nights at off-campus restaurants to residents in specific freshman dormitories, which would encourage students to continue to eat in groups.
"The question is: How close can we get to that without breaking the bank?" Trask added.
At this stage in the planning process, it remains unclear whether upperclassmen will also be allowed to use food points on Ninth Street, Wulforst said.
Even if students are able to use their food points on Ninth Street, dining services still must decide exactly how many mandatory Marketplace meals to prescribe for the freshmen, he explained.
He noted that although the incoming Class of 2010 is signing up for meal plans under the current model, they likely will be notified of a change over the summer.
"They could be in for a very nice surprise," Wulforst said with a laugh.
Looking ahead
If the changes are implemented, however, they will come at a cost.
For instance, Wulforst conceded that with fewer prepaid meals for freshmen, kosher dining at the Freeman Center for Jewish Life may suffer.
Several freshmen told The Chronicle in March that they only eat at the FCJL because they can pay for the meals with their board plan.
"If you relax the general requirement, things are going to shift," Wulforst said. "But the good news is that students are getting more choices."
With a less confining meal plan, the FCJL will almost certainly serve fewer meals and realize less income.
And if students' points are applied off campus, that would direct money away from the University's coffers.
At some other institutions, dining is not expected to be self-sufficient; at Duke, however, it has always been expected to break even every year, Wulforst explained.
"But [now] for the first time, the University is saying, 'Let's relax the requirement, and if it costs us money, we'll deal with that,'" Wulforst said of the possible alteration to the board plan.
Trask said that it may be time for the administration to adopt a new outlook.
"I don't think the problem is entirely money, but I think more is a key to it," he said, adding that he believes the West Union, which houses the Great Hall, Alpine Bagels, the Loop and Chick-fil-A, is also in dire need of a makeover.
"It's 75 years old and has not had a lot of substantive work.... We need to recapture some very valuable space that's largely empty," he stressed.
Renovations would include rearranging Subway, the Loop, Chick-fil-A and the Great Hall to create more of a cohesive dining atmosphere, Wulforst said.
"The mission is to take a look at the dining model very differently in the future," Wulforst said.
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