Dining Services has raised the price from $15 to $25 (for one ticket to all Shabbat meals, if you’ve signed up on time). Thus, if someone wants to stay in every week of the semester, they need to procure an extra $130 to cover the new cost.* So if it was already hard to maintain a steady balance on your caf card, it just got a lot harder.
Ironically, the price hike is not indicative of increased costs for Shabbat food and programming. The actual per-person cost remains the same. The difference, which Dean of Students Dr. Chaim Nissel explained in a school wide email on September 4, 2014, is that YU can no longer subsidize tickets to the extent that they have done in the past. While I am grateful that YU is still subsidizing a portion of each Shabbat ticket, it is frustrating that our University’s solution was to charge students more for their Shabbat tickets instead of finding ways to reduce the actual cost of Shabbat.
But what scares me even more are the far-reaching consequences that the price hike has on student life and especially the ‘out-of-towner’ community. I see the price hike as a crude experiment in behavioral economics: raise the price to the point where the consumers have to find an alternative. The in-towner’s alternative is quite obvious: just go home for Shabbat. Out-of-towners like me don’t have the luxury of going home every week (because my hometown in Boston is about 4-5 hours away by bus). So, out-of-towners will seek alternatives: Chabad of Midtown Manhattan, Edward J Safra Synagogue, NYU Hillel, inviting themselves over to extended family, or making Shabbat meals in private dorm rooms.
While there are alternatives I can look to, I’m not interested in them. It feels a little pathetic to go to another college or institution because I can’t afford to stay in. And more importantly, I’d much rather stay in Stern because it is my community and it has become part and parcel with my college experience over the past two years. I don’t want to be priced out of my own community, but that’s essentially what this price hike is doing.
So no matter how good the Shabbat programming is, if the ticket prices are too high, in-towners and out-of-towners alike will seek financially viable alternatives. This is why it is so urgent to find solutions for this problem: if Shabbat is an important aspect of our campus experience, then it needs to be made affordable.
Perhaps, if we can find ways to reduce the overall cost, the University can charge students less per-ticket. Here are two solutions:
First, reduce cost for facilities and wait staff. One of the reasons Shabbat is so costly is because Stern hires approximately ten waitresses per Shabbat (ten waitresses X $80 per waiter = $800). What if, on small Shabbatot, the wait staff served food buffet style? It would cut the wait staff in half, thereby cutting that cost in half. I know many waitresses want the income, but that is not Stern’s primary concern. Another benefit is that food providers don’t need to serve as much food if it is being served buffet-style. This will reduce the amount of food waste and will also save money from the overall cost.
Second, host co-ed Shabbatot uptown instead of Stern. If we did it during Hurricane Sandy, why not do it again? Presently, YU students stay over in a hotel for co-ed Shabbatot. Considering the exorbitant cost of hotels in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, what if Stern students went uptown instead? Perhaps MTA could set aside some of their dorms for Stern students. If the goal is just to have a co-ed Shabbat, then going uptown is a reasonable thing to do. I understand that this could be a hashkafically controversial change, though it should still be considered if only for its financial savings.
I shall close with this: Zionist philosopher Asher Tzvi Hirsch Ginsberg, better known by his penname Achad Ha’Am, is famous for saying that “just as much as the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” In this radical statement, Achad Ha’Am argues that the Shabbat itself is the fulcrum of Jewish existence. Every Jewish community, including our own college community, is also kept together through the spiritual bonds we create and nurture on Shabbat. At our Orthodox university, we ought to provide the most outstanding Shabbat experience possible. And indeed, I am proud to say that Shabbat is one of the most important aspects of my Stern experience. Shabbat in Stern is spiritually fulfilling. I’ve met some of my closest friends at Shabbat meals. I am a proud member of this community.
It is time for Shabbat to become affordable, so all students can access that experience. It therefore behooves us to reach out to our Deans, TAC, and the Shabbat Enhancement Committees urging them towards change, so that Shabbat can be made affordable.
*Math Break down:
$25 per Shabbat X 13 weeks per semester = $325 for the new price
$15 per Shabbat X13 weeks per semester = $195 for last year’s price
$325 – $195 = $130 extra due to price hike. Most out-of-towners barely had enough even before the price hike. Now, in order to stay in-budget, out-of-towners will definitely need to find alternatives unless changes are made.