On Dining Services and scholarly communities

Over the course of the last week, much has been said and printed about Dining Service's alterations to the meal plan requirement for incoming freshmen and the analogous changes made to the menu of available plans for upperclass students. Originally, the administration touted the new "Titanium Plan" concept as a way to strengthen the College House System by fostering community among student, faculty and staff residents of the Houses in an informal setting. Once the criticism began to mount, however, the University recanted the fabrication, and stated that the major consideration in these mandates and revisions was the unstable financial future faced by Campus Dining Services. The Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, the body concerned with academics and the undergraduate student experience, does not and cannot support the new Dining Services arrangement as currently constituted. It directly inhibits the vision we have for the development of the "community of scholars" embodied, in part, by meaningful student-faculty interaction outside the traditional bounds of the classroom. The Office of College Houses and Academic Services has helped to realize the vision of the intellectual campus, and it has taken seriously its obligation to create a meaningful undergraduate residential experience that infuses personal and intellectual growth into everyday life. Penn's 12 houses bring together various different residential leaders in order to build community by engaging campus residents in any number of different ways. By getting to know residents and by learning their interests, the staffs of the individual houses endeavor to foster a community in which students can thrive and excel. These goals are being realized because the College House System is nurturing a community rather than forcing its residents to interact with each other or with the faculty. It is the duty and obligation of the system and its staff to create an environment where students will desire this type of living arrangement. College houses will not succeed if they coerce people to enter a system that clearly doesn't work. Dining Services, however, seems to have taken the idea of building a workable, voluntary and desirable community, and twisted it into an unrecognizable and perverted form. Seeing that its current enterprise, as presently constituted, was failing in its social and financial goals, the staff of this office elected to alter its environment into one characterized by mandatory participation and mediocre quality. Rather than addressing logistical and business issues such as facility cleanliness and food quality, the Dining Services management, with the blessing of senior University administrators, is now, so to speak, forcing a community down the throat of each college house. The community that this "fosters" is not something that SCUE supports. A sense of identity and camaraderie does not materialize overnight, nor is it a phenomenon that exists in a constituency dissatisfied with the product it is receiving. By attempting to require interaction in the dining halls, especially in their current form, the administration is degrading the notion of a community of scholars. This quick fix solution will only ostracize the very students for whom the financial renewal plan for the dining system is based. The current College House Renewal Project, which will expand the number of beds available to students, while simultaneously refurbishing, restoring and reconfiguring the existing residence halls, was the result of a lengthy dialogue involving students, staff and residential faculty on how best to design a house so as to better community interaction. The administration's subsequent allocation of financial resources to support these plans was equally crucial for their success. Dining Services should follow the lead of this program, and truly engage members of the University community to create dining halls and meals that accurately reflect the needs and desires of this campus. Additionally, the administration must show its commitment to the ideals of the residential student-faculty community by providing the resources necessary to follow through on these developments. Until that time, we feel that any attempt to keep an unsuccessful operation afloat by bleeding the pockets of students and parents is unwise, unwarranted and detrimental to the goals of the College House System. Dining Services will never truly succeed in its mission -- to nourish our students in an environment consistent with the ideals of the residential program -- until it comprehends this reality. The College House System is based on the model of a wheel. With the current dining spoke effectively missing, the wheel's function is compromised. SCUE is calling for the administration and Dining Services to act quickly and devote the necessary resources to revamping dining services in terms of its facilities, products and services.

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