Staff Editorial: Dining changes not enough

Penn Dining Services has announced a major change to dining plans -- the third such change in the past year.

And though, in some ways, the new plan is an improvement over the current one, it still falls far short of the major overhaul that Dining needs in order to appeal to students and get out of the red.

The simple fact is that the current "all-you-care-to-eat" system is a failure, and the changes made do little to address that all-important truth. Just cutting the number of meals in the meal plan -- which, through a clever trick in the use of Dining Dollars, does not actually make the smaller plans cheaper than the larger ones were this year -- does not address the greater failure of campus dining within Penn's larger retail strategy, which seems to be at odds with Dining Services.

With nearly 50 eateries on or around campus, a multitude of quick and cheap food trucks along our sidewalks and one of the best restaurant cities in America just across the Schuylkill, Dining needs to be rethought entirely -- from its administrative structure all the way down to the quality of the food and how it is to be distributed.

"Chefs' Showcases" and an improved ambience in the dining halls are interesting additions, but not what Dining needs to attract back the 1,500 students that gave up on campus dining entirely last year.

And more Dining Dollars are not the answer, particularly when they can only be used at Houston Market. An entirely new system, one that serves to complement the surrounding retail rather than discourage students from eating anywhere other than a dining hall, is.

The "new" plan is, in reality, more or less the plan that was in place before last year's changes -- a plan which was changed, after all, because it too lost money.

And that's no way to make Dining Services self-sufficient. Change -- substantial change -- is needed, and fast.

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