Ok, while I was trying to go to bed, I came up with another quick idea that someone might be interested in in regards to the food costs.
Contact your friends at Middlebury, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, etc and ask them how their meal plan works. Create a cute and pretty guide comparing the food plans in comparison to Wesleyan’s. Distribute the guide to tours. (The parent’s listserv is actually pretty upset about the high cost of food, too.) I can say, for example, that Bowdoin’s food plan is the holy grail of food plans and Middlebury’s isn’t too shabby, either. If these are who we are competing for for students, prospective students and parents should be aware of what they’re signing onto. (Actually, you can thank Delmar Crimm for this idea since he is so keen on comparing the wages our workers get in comparison to what they would get at other schools; I figured well, if you do that, we might as well compare the meal plans, too, and see how that stacks up.)
Again, just a thought. Not a directive. But it might lend some credibility to that particular demand.
wa wa wa = wa wa wa wa – wa
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buffet = wasteDid you clean your plate when Aramark was here? a la carte = mindfulness
buffet = waste
Did you clean your plate when Aramark was here?
a la carte = mindfulness
people complained about quality of food with Aramark, and now that the food is better, the prices are too high! guess what?! you can’t have better food with lower prices. it doesn’t work that way. deal with it. you want more worker benefits? prices go even higher! bon appetit will, and I mean WILL, preserve their bottom line at our expense, so the student body must decide how good the food should be and how the benefits are and deal with the prices. however, I do agree that lunch should be buffet, and not a la carte
people complained about quality of food with Aramark, and now that the food is better, the prices are too high! guess what?! you can’t have better food with lower prices. it doesn’t work that way. deal with it. you want more worker benefits? prices go even higher! bon appetit will, and I mean WILL, preserve their bottom line at our expense, so the student body must decide how good the food should be and how the benefits are and deal with the prices.
however, I do agree that lunch should be buffet, and not a la carte
I think, above, the problem with costs is that they nickel and dime us. Rather than say, operate an all you can eat venue, they choose to have an a la carte venue which in the long run is more expensive in terms of utensils, packaging, variety, etc. Economies of scale would dictate that producing for a lot of students the same few options would be cheaper than producing a huge variety of others.I’m not exactly sure what students are worried about, but I do know that 8 points for a bowl of fruit is ridiculous.
I think, above, the problem with costs is that they nickel and dime us. Rather than say, operate an all you can eat venue, they choose to have an a la carte venue which in the long run is more expensive in terms of utensils, packaging, variety, etc. Economies of scale would dictate that producing for a lot of students the same few options would be cheaper than producing a huge variety of others.
I’m not exactly sure what students are worried about, but I do know that 8 points for a bowl of fruit is ridiculous.
The food is so expensive because the labor is so expensive – duh! You want these workers to make as much as faculty (and some do) and have even better benefits, so you should partner with BA in supporting them! You should be HAPPY to pay high prices for the food! But no, you want BA to give them amazing wages/bennies and let you get away with paying cheap prices? They aren’t a charity for gawd’s sake!
The food is so expensive because the labor is so expensive – duh! You want these workers to make as much as faculty (and some do) and have even better benefits, so you should partner with BA in supporting them! You should be HAPPY to pay high prices for the food! But no, you want BA to give them amazing wages/bennies and let you get away with paying cheap prices? They aren’t a charity for gawd’s sake!
I’d be interested in knowing the actual results of the study first before we start calling each other “dishonest”.
I’d be interested in knowing the actual results of the study first before we start calling each other “dishonest”.
au contraire mad joy, au contraireI mean, BA has been in location and serving food for at least a month. . . do you want to postpone doing anything until it’s too late?Holly’s Idea is a good one, and I think it’s absurd to say that spreading information is going to make things “yukky.” I mean if they don’t want to go to a school where food costs this much more than the average, are you saying we should hide that fact from them and trick them into going to Wesleyan. Mad joy, you’re advocating dishonesty and keeping the current studsents from getting what they want, and I can’t abide by that.
au contraire mad joy, au contraire
I mean, BA has been in location and serving food for at least a month. . . do you want to postpone doing anything until it’s too late?
Holly’s Idea is a good one, and I think it’s absurd to say that spreading information is going to make things “yukky.”
I mean if they don’t want to go to a school where food costs this much more than the average, are you saying we should hide that fact from them and trick them into going to Wesleyan.
Mad joy, you’re advocating dishonesty and keeping the current studsents from getting what they want, and I can’t abide by that.
While this is a good idea for targeting change, I also think it’s… mean. I really do think we should lighten up and try to give the administration and BA a chance to fix things – they already know that students are unsatisfied. It would be impossible to not get that impression by this point. So if we give them some time before making things really messy, wouldn’t that be fair?And this plan in particular would have the negative effect of detracting student interest from Wesleyan. Come on, all in all Wesleyan is an amazing school, and most people love it here – and having students hand out fliers with negative impressions of Wesleyan on a tour surely would not make those students optimistic about coming to the school. I know that the idea of a protest is kind of “to hit them where it hurts”, but if where it hurts them is also where it hurts us, isn’t that countereffective?
While this is a good idea for targeting change, I also think it’s… mean. I really do think we should lighten up and try to give the administration and BA a chance to fix things – they already know that students are unsatisfied. It would be impossible to not get that impression by this point. So if we give them some time before making things really messy, wouldn’t that be fair?
And this plan in particular would have the negative effect of detracting student interest from Wesleyan. Come on, all in all Wesleyan is an amazing school, and most people love it here – and having students hand out fliers with negative impressions of Wesleyan on a tour surely would not make those students optimistic about coming to the school. I know that the idea of a protest is kind of “to hit them where it hurts”, but if where it hurts them is also where it hurts us, isn’t that countereffective?
That, Holly, is a remarkably excellent idea. It would definitely achieve something – what, however, is another question. I suppose it would depend on the focus of the comparison: cost/worker’s rights/worker’s compensations/organic-ness/buying local/etc. The real question then is what do we, as a student body, want? What is more important to us, cost, where the food comes from, how it’s made? This is where the whole problem starts getting difficult…
That, Holly, is a remarkably excellent idea. It would definitely achieve something – what, however, is another question. I suppose it would depend on the focus of the comparison: cost/worker’s rights/worker’s compensations/organic-ness/buying local/etc. The real question then is what do we, as a student body, want? What is more important to us, cost, where the food comes from, how it’s made? This is where the whole problem starts getting difficult…
The WSA and Bon Appetit are working together to find creative ways to cut back on prices. It takes time, but a lot of thought is going into this problem, on all sides. In the relatively near future, expect to see the prices on some items, like fresh fruit, to go down as cost-cutting measures are taken.That being said, Wesleyan students ought to be proud of what our dining workers have achieved for workers’ rights. We support them by paying a little more at the cash register than we might at other schools that don’t have a history of treating their workers so well after hard-won union victories. Delmar Crim’s numbers may obscure the fact that the dining plan is “better” at these other schools, but it’s important that as progressive-minded Wes students we reconcile our desire for affordable food with our commitment to workers’s rights.
The WSA and Bon Appetit are working together to find creative ways to cut back on prices. It takes time, but a lot of thought is going into this problem, on all sides. In the relatively near future, expect to see the prices on some items, like fresh fruit, to go down as cost-cutting measures are taken.
That being said, Wesleyan students ought to be proud of what our dining workers have achieved for workers’ rights. We support them by paying a little more at the cash register than we might at other schools that don’t have a history of treating their workers so well after hard-won union victories. Delmar Crim’s numbers may obscure the fact that the dining plan is “better” at these other schools, but it’s important that as progressive-minded Wes students we reconcile our desire for affordable food with our commitment to workers’s rights.