More than Pennies holds food-donation event, but is frustrated by Penn Dining

Penn students are becoming famous for not eating - or rather, for donating their uneaten meals to the homeless.

Since reading days last semester, Wharton freshman Ricky Oxenhandler, along with College freshmen Becca Elman and Jake Werlin, a Daily Pennsylvanian photographer, has been working on More Than Pennies, an initiative to donate students' uneaten meals to homeless people and shelters around Philadelphia.

What started out as a few students hand-delivering meals to homeless people in and around SEPTA stations has quickly grown into a University-wide initiative assisted by the Undergraduate Assembly and Penn Dining Services. The project is also being featured by NBC.

After overcoming a few hurdles with Penn Dining, the group last Wednesday held a large-scale end-of-semester event allowing students to pledge meals they wished to donate.

The project first involved students individually collecting non-perishable items in take-out cartons from campus dining halls and delivering them to Philadelphia SEPTA stations and homeless shelters.

As the initiative grew, Oxenhandler, Elman and Werlin worked to get more students interested and involved by collaborating with the UA.

College Sophomore and chairman of the UA's Civic and Community Engagement Committee Mark Pan said the UA's primary goal in this initiative is fostering communication and collaboration among all student groups that hope to put leftover meals from Dining Services to use.

While More than Pennies originally planned to continue collecting individual take-out cartons for three days last week, Dining Services protested the plan. Oxenhandler explained that they were worried that they would not have enough food left in the dining hall to last each day.

"On a regular night, they plan it out so accordingly that they only have two apples left and three bananas," he said.

This would make the cap for number of meals taken out the amount of food that was available, rather than the number of meals students wanted to donate.Dining Services also accounts for unused meals as a part of their business plan, said Elman.

As as result, Dining Services proposed having students sign pledges on one day declaring their donations. It would then provide food in bulk of an equivalent monetary value to the amount students donated.

Dining Services did not respond to requests for comment. Oxenhandler noted that it first responded to their requests for collaboration after NBC requested to cover the project.

Elman said although the pledges allowed a space for students to state the maximum amount of meals they would be willing to donate, Dining Services guaranteed only one meal per student.

The new plan is mutually beneficial by allowing Dining Services to remain fully operational, Oxenhandler said. Bulk items will last longer and can be catered to the different shelters' individual needs. Also, it makes the logistics of food transportation slightly easier because students do not have to transport thousands of individual take-out cartons.

However, from the total amount that Dining Services said they spent according to pledges received, they have only allocated $3.61 per meal, assuming they only accounted for one meal for the 532 donors, said Elman.

Averaging lunch and dinner, the price for a meal between lunch and dinner is $12.95, so even taking cost of labor and other related fees into account, "we still think $3.61 is a little weak," she said.

Additionally, if Dining Services had accounted for all donated meals, over 10,300 meals would go to homeless people around the city.

Using the support they received from students this semester as leverage, participants in the initiative say if Dining Services won't be more cooperative, they will revert to their original plan and simply take food from the dining halls, said Oxenhandler.

"There's a lot of bargaining power on the student's side," Pan said.

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Comments (7)

[QUOTE id="967e70c6-1868-4ce2-8e7c-28baf96e48cc"]Sigma Alpha Mu (the fraternity Ricky is in) should have gotten recognition in this article, as the brothers were involved in just about every More Than Pennies event. The fraternity, on multiple occasions, served as the drop-off center for hand-packed meals and many of the brothers personally went to the shelters to deliver the food. Overall it is a great program, but I just feel that Sammy should get some sort of shout out.[/QUOTE] Who cares who gets recognition? I think this program is great, no matter who gets a "shout out." Additionally, Penn students should be able to donate ALL of their leftover meals to food banks. When you purchase a meal ($12.95 each, as stated in the article), you have bought the right to eat as much food as you want. With that being the case, that's what Penn Dining should be planning for on a daily and nightly basis. So, Penn Students should be able to fill up their takeout boxes (which are really too small to start with, even when the student is the one doing the eating) with as much food as possible when they want to donate them. When I go to the dining hall, I easily go through three plates and three drinks. That kind of consumption is reasonable for $12.95 when you bear in mind that the food quality is satisfactory and far from excellent.

As long as all the students in the meal program realize that their contract price will have to be raised to compensate for the increased food consumption, then that's fine for a subset of students to run such a program. But I'm not sure everyone (especially the parents footing the bill) wants to see their meal plan fees increased for this purpose, noble as it may be. There's no free lunch, after all.

[QUOTE id="c3f16fe8-3db5-49b8-9147-bad8a44b460e"]As long as all the students in the meal program realize that their contract price will have to be raised to compensate for the increased food consumption, then that's fine for a subset of students to run such a program. But I'm not sure everyone (especially the parents footing the bill) wants to see their meal plan fees increased for this purpose, noble as it may be. There's no free lunch, after all.[/QUOTE] But if the meals are already being paid for, shouldn't that be taken into account? Why should students have to pay a premium to "actually" use all of their meals?

[QUOTE]But if the meals are already being paid for, shouldn't that be taken into account? Why should students have to pay a premium to "actually" use all of their meals?[/QUOTE]I'm sure some students already use all their meals for themselves, which is perfectly fine. But as we've seen, many students do not do so, and that's normal. The food service costs are based on usage patterns from years gone by�?they know how much food to buy for the number of students in the program. All those unused meals that the students never ate were never actually prepared. They never existed. But by donating them, they will now need to exist, and that means more food will have to be prepared than originally budgeted. More food means higher costs and that means higher fees at some point.

becca elman, ricky oxenhandler, jake werlin, and kim parada are gods. thank you!

Sigma Alpha Mu (the fraternity Ricky is in) should have gotten recognition in this article, as the brothers were involved in just about every More Than Pennies event. The fraternity, on multiple occasions, served as the drop-off center for hand-packed meals and many of the brothers personally went to the shelters to deliver the food. Overall it is a great program, but I just feel that Sammy should get some sort of shout out.

Joel Blice and Scott Myers deserve MAJOR KUDOS for working so closely with the students, handling last minute requests, serving delicious food and smiling the entire time. Jenn DaCosta was crucial in the marketing department; Paul Bulau participated as a panelist in the Tuesday night sustainability panel; Terri Brownlee and Lydia Kumpa were the “main event” in Thursday night’s cooking demonstration and kitchen tour.Others who showed me around and helped out at the events include (and I’m sorry I don’t know everyone’s name): Theresa Varvir, Chef Donald, Chef Eric, Amy (from catering), Angela (from catering), as well as many, many others in the kitchen/set up process.Non-Bon Appétit folks who were instrumental in the process include: Mary Summers, Laurie Cousart and Barbara Lee-Kruger.And last but certainly not least, there were the students who made it all happen: Ingrid Lindquist, Sandra Zhao, Carolyna De Laurentiis, Ori Pleban, Maura Goldstein, Caroline Murray, Sarah Ladley and Danny Lafuente. In addition to their busy class schedules, they answered hundreds of emails and made a phenomenal week happen. It was truly an inspiring group of individuals, and Penn should consider itself lucky to have them on its campus.

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