By Yisroel Rosner, Staff Writer
It is that time of year again. That time when students transition suddenly from the tranquil, easy-going, environment of summer to a hectic, bustling school year in NYC. It’s a different state of mind that has students thinking about all of our extra responsibilities, and one thing became clear: college is a busy time, especially in Yeshiva University. So busy in fact, that it is easy to lose focus of what we eat. Between studies, extracurriculars, and social life, food often seems like an afterthought. Which is why YU has an awesome meal plan which provides students relief from thinking about how, when, where, and what they eat, right? Unfortunately not. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite.
Each semester, on both the Wilf and Beren campuses, YU ‘offers’ a choice between three mandatory dining plans at different price-points for YU dorming students, and one mandatory option for non-dorming students. YU students are certainly no stranger to mandatory expenses. In addition to the meal plan, students have to worry about tuition, residence, security fees, and paying for school resources.
The impetus for a mandatory meal plan system in YU is obvious. The institution aims to serve a student population that primarily keeps kosher with a systematized way to obtain such food on a daily basis. Mandating such a plan makes the kosher ‘caf’ operation more worthwhile and profitable.
However, from the students’ perspective, a mandated meal plan should mean a functional meal plan. Most students would expect at the very least for a meal plan to cover their basic food needs. Forget about snacks, breakfast, and even brunch; at the very least, a meal plan at the right price-point should ensure a basic two meals a day. If that’s not the standard, what is? As it turns out, the caf system does not adequately cover these needs. In fact, ironically, the caf meal plan is designed in a manner that demands students curate their own meals. Such a system is inadequate for the student body.
So what exactly is wrong with the meal plan? Where are the system’s fault lines? I believe it boils down to two fundamental issues with the system.
The first issue revolves around the fact that these meal plans are all declining balance systems. Meaning that similar to debit cards, the set cost of the meal plan becomes the balance from which your food purchases are deducted from. Once you have purchased a meal plan, you can always add funds but never subtract funds from your balance. Furthermore, at the end of the year, a student’s remaining balance is not refunded, but rather, is kept by YU. As a consequence, students are forced to carefully watch their spending, performing a balancing act between trying to avoid squandering their caf balance too early and avoiding excess frugality so as to not gift unredeemed money to YU.
It should not be the responsibility of a paying student (especially non-math majors) to crunch the numbers each semester and calculate from the outset how much they can spend on caf food each day. It should not be their responsibility to keep track of their spending and alter this equation every time they spend more or less than their projections. This is especially true for dorming students whose plan unevenly splits funding between money that can be exclusively used at the cafeteria and flex dollars, which can be used at participating vendors and restaurants. They must keep track of how much money they have left in each of these categories. Sounds like fun, if you’re a math major.
The second major drawback of such a system is forced rationing. YU essentially gives a budget in which you have to fit all your needs. These numbers are arbitrary and don’t fit with everybody’s spending habits, but it forces students to contort their spending around these numbers. After all the wasted brain space devoted to how to properly use their money, students end up having to ration further, spending additional money or borrowing money for others, to get through the semester. It’s illogical that you should have to ration food if you’re paying additional money for meal coverage. Furthermore, if you want to ration, you should not be forced to pay the additional money to begin with.
All this leads to the final piece of the “declining balance system” puzzle, which is the notorious caf daddy culture that it creates. This is where YU students of all shapes and sizes, bound together by the shared property of containing excess caf money, subsidize their peers, friends, and acquaintances who share an empty caf account. Although an iconic and unique aspect of YU, its strangeness belies the broken nature of the caf system.
The second fundamental issue with the caf system is the à la carte serving system. Every time you decide to eat at the YU cafeteria, it is like ordering at a fast casual restaurant. This means every item is priced separately with no comprehensive meal option offered. In Furman Dining Hall, it means having to wait in line whether you want sushi or carbs and proteins. While there is nothing wrong with fast food restaurants, it should not serve as a model for a student “dining club” membership, to use YU’s own terms.
Again, the focus here is not on the quality of the food but on the convenience of the system. The à la carte system means students not only have to think about ‘when’ and ‘where’ they eat, but also ‘what’ and ‘how much’ they eat. Now, as much as I enjoy complaining, you can’t gripe with variety. The problem stems from the fact that your choices are monetized. Every time a student eats at the cafeteria they must make individual choices from a monetary perspective and not from health, personal or quality perspectives. Students often have to choose between ‘eating their veggies’ or ‘getting their carbs in.’ The system is consequently friendlier to dieting students than to bulking students and people with slower metabolisms.
The saddest part of the system, which I can confirm anecdotally, is that for few busy students, it ends up becoming a question of ‘whether or not I should eat today at all.’ The rationale being that you must not eat on certain days in order to eat fully on other days. This is a question that should not even be a thought with a functional meal plan.
So this all begs the question: what is the alternative to the à la carte method? From both conversations I’ve had and consequent research, the answer is a literal meal plan. It seems the vast majority of colleges have comprehensive meal plans where you actually pay for a fixed amount of meals per week, as opposed to individual food items. Since the price students pay at the outset for the meal plan determines the amount of meals they have access to, they end up eating how frequently they want and need to. If students theoretically want to eat three meals a day for five days a week, they simply purchase a fifteen meal per week plan and are covered for the entirety of the semester. The best part is that the meals themselves are often buffet style, which means students do not have to choose between veggies and carbs, and can dine to their own personal needs and satiation.
YU is incredible and undeniably serves a special purpose in the American Jewish world. It’s why many of us are here. However, all of us who want to optimize the YU experience believe that there are certain standards which are not met in some areas of the institution. The YU meal plan is one of them. To be fair, I believe, even as a self admitted “foodie,” that we should slightly lower our expectations regarding the quality and epicurean properties of cafeteria food. It is mass-produced for hundreds of college students after all. However, a meal plan should still be a meal plan, not a glorified kosher casual restaurant.
Photo Caption: The Cafeteria on the Wilf campus
Photo Credit: Shua Feigin