Dining meal plan changes presented

Where can you get gourmet coffee to go, an all you can eat feast and a homestyle meal served to your table? Campus Dining Services (CDS) may soon have the answer.

Michele Gross, assistant director of Residential Life and Services, met with Student Senators and a campus-wide group of 20 students Oct. 11 to discuss the proposed new meal plan. She maintained the proposal is only a draft and said the ResLife department is seeking student input. "We are asking students, 'What do you want us to offer?'"

ResLife is proposing an overhaul of meal plan options that could include renovating Dascomb and Wilder Dining Spaces, specializing the type of menus in each dining hall and incorporating a weekly 14-meal plan for off-campus students. The new service would be available beginning in Fall 1998.

The ResLife department plans to establish an electronic bulletin board and post drawing plans of the renovations in dining halls during the month of November to solicit more students' opinion of the proposal. Staff members then hope to summarize that information by February and, if student response is largely positive, initiate the plan.

Members of ResLife approached the Marriott corporation, Oberlin's food provider, to design the proposal. Marriott's contract expires in May 1998.

Under Marriott's plan Dascomb would be transformed into a cafeteria where students can carry out items including pizza, a "Boston Market" style carving station and bakery products. ResLife is suggesting Dascomb as a site for this new snack bar to alleviate the heavy student traffic in Wilder.

Junior Catherine Mayhew welcomes a roomier snack bar. "Wilder is too crowded. This is especially true in the morning. You can't even get a cup of coffee without waiting in line for 20 minutes," she said.

Wilder would offer gourmet coffee, baked goods, sub sandwiches, "grab & go" food stuffs and possibly would become a "CyberCafe" where students could sip Cappuccino while surfing the Internet.

Sophomore Jenny Cutler likes the idea of computers and cups of coffee. "That would be cool to be in a room, fooling around on the Internet with a couple of friends. You can't get any better than that - computers, friends, coffee," she said.

Also, each dining location would offer its own type of menu, with Talcott offering Family Style service where food is brought to tables. The service in Stevenson, the Rathskellar and Lord-Saunders would largely remain the same, but menu changes could occur.

Seven of the 14 off-campus students' meals would go towards flexible dollars which students could use for prepared food or convenience store supplies. Senior Julie Keenan is a Fairchild co-oper and eats a CDS meal once per week. "If they could make flexible dollars work at Missler's, that would be good," she said.

On-campus students would still have to purchase 21 weekly meals.

Student senator senior Dan Persky said he would approve the plan, but that the proposals do not do enough. "The proposals are not that shocking or revolutionary," he said.

Persky said student finances are a key concern and the proposal does not go far enough to ease costs. "[Marriott and ResLife] are not proposing enough [meal plan] options because mainly they would lose money," he said.

Senior Ellen Kazary agreed that CDS' pricetag can cause sticker shock. "I don't care if you get gourmet coffees. The big problem that I have and too many students have is that it costs so much to eat here. If you gave me $3,000, I could eat and live for a year," she said.

CDS Director Dave Jensen confirmed the price of meals would probably stay the same for several years. "It will be a while before the cost of the [meal] program significantly changes because the college is really needing those dollars," he said.

Persky also raised concerns about Marriott varying its food selection to include more foods students say they desire, such as healthier choices, bakery products and Asian dishes. "Marriott [has the ability to] do what they want. We are not asking for too much. There are certain food products students take, like bagels and donuts. My God, they already ran out of cookies twice this week in the Snack Bar," he said Wednesday evening.

Other students echo the concern about the number of healthy options. Said first-year Brendan Ravenhill, "All the Snack Bar has are burgers and french fries. It's just grease. They don't have good salads or anything healthy," he said.

Persky said these concerns merit reviewing different companies to offer food service.

Gross said, "Within the near future, we feel it would be a good idea to review who is providing our dining services." She said no plans, if any, for change are set. There is also a possibility of extending Marriott's current contract one year.

Keenan said, "That's exciting," when she learned Marriott's contract expires next spring. "The food is better than at most schools. But all of the vegetarian food has no taste. Unless you want to eat meat or fried food, you're screwed in CDS."

Kazary said, "Marriott has done a better job than most schools. But they can't stop here. They need to keep making changes."

Gross said she does not want the new dining options to compete with downtown Oberlin businesses. "We are not interested in competition with downtown. We want to sensitively change our services so as to work with and enhance what is downtown. We want to add another option, not a duplication," she said. Gross added, "Students will always find vendors off-campus and should find vendors off-campus they want to patronize."

Jensen believes a more complete renovation will be needed. "The only way for us to really change what we do for students is to change [update] our facilities. We need to do it," he said.

Long-term planning includes renovating Stevenson to connect its three dining rooms to improve its atmosphere and make one room for washing dishes to save labor costs. Jensen said he does not expect permanent or student employees to be affected by the new design.