Every sophomore who lives in university housing is required to purchase a full meal plan, currently priced at $2,840 per semester, regardless of whether they have a kitchen, dietary restrictions the dining halls can't accommodate, or a work schedule that never lines up with serving hours.
The university frames this as a matter of convenience and community. In practice, it is a mandatory expense layered on top of tuition, room, and fees that already strain many students' budgets, and it falls hardest on students who can least absorb it.
A policy built for the median student, not the whole student body
I spoke with a dozen students for this column who described skipping meals to make plan funds last through finals, subsisting on a rotating handful of dining hall staples because their allergies rule out most stations, or working evening shifts that make the dining hall's 8 p.m. closing time functionally useless.
A policy that assumes every student has the same schedule, the same diet, and the same kitchen access isn't neutral. It has a default student in mind, and it isn't most of us.
None of this is an argument against meal plans existing. For first-years in particular, a shared dining hall is a reasonable, even valuable, default. The argument is against making that default mandatory for upperclassmen with kitchens, jobs, and dietary needs the university has already been told it cannot meet.
What a fairer policy could look like
Several peer universities offer tiered plans, opt-outs for students in kitchen-equipped housing, and dietary-accommodation waivers reviewed by a dedicated office rather than left to informal appeals. None of these require abandoning dining halls as a shared campus institution. They require treating the meal plan as a service students choose into, not a fee assessed by default.