The W&L Dining Hall Shakedown
The W&L Dining Hall Shakedown
The university exploits students with onerous dining requirements, irrespective of intentions.
(The Dining Hall Shakedown Machine | SOURCE: Anonymous artist)
For once, my conservative self agrees full-heartedly with the Biden-Harris administration. In March, the administration announced a proposal “to crack down on hidden junk fees” forced on college students, including “fees or unseen costs for unused meal account funds,” noting that “students aren’t always provided clear and upfront opportunities to avoid fees for services they do not want.”
This free-market breath of fresh air embraced even by a Democrat president — that students should be “Free to Choose” how they spend their money — is apparently foreign to Washington and Lee University, which recently upped the number of weekly meal swipes that students are required to purchase.
Once able to opt for as few as 7 swipes per week, students are now forced to pay for a plan providing 15 meals each week. That entails a nearly $3,000 jump in fees to move from last year’s 7-swipe minimum, clearly a significant financial burden.
Nor can students save their unused swipes for later, as they expire at the end of each week; unused swipes are wasted money.
Students who had intended to save money and do their own cooking for any number of reasons are now hamstrung, pushed to use W&L’s dining facilities or else double pay for their meals.
No matter, because W&L knows how to use your money best.
According to K.C. Schaefer, who helps manage W&L dining services, the increased requirement is justified for several reasons and came after conversations between “class deans … and then also those folks in dining who are seeing those student needs every day.”
What they saw, Schaefer elaborated, is that students “were opting into that lowest meal plan available, and then they were really struggling for that to be enough.” Students who intended to cook for themselves, he noted, “weren’t really often successful” at doing so given W&L’s rigorous experience.
They’ve also seen a subset of students feel obligated to send aid money home rather than funding a full meal plan, a choice they want no student to make.
Somewhat peripherally, the university hopes to foster “an increased level of engagement on campus” by spurring students to create new social connections through interactions in W&L’s dining venues, regardless of class year.
University staff and administrators may indeed have students’ best interests at heart, given their collective wisdom. Schaefer also assured The Spectator that the changes were not made for financial reasons.
But that would by no means suggest the higher fees aren’t exploitative.
Students largely do not want the $3,000 in additional meals, if the conversations, interviews, and emails they shared with The Spectator are any indication.
Traveling to dining facilities is inconvenient for seniors living off-campus. International students wish to prepare meals that better reflect their culture and the culinary standards of home. Christian, Muslim, and Hindu students seek dining settings that better help them meet their religious obligations and have been disturbingly offered no exemptions to do so.
And students of all stripes find the increased cost burdensome.
Many students clearly feel their needs differ from the prescription that the nanny school gives its adult wards. The new requirement is unwanted, unneeded, constrains choice, and delivers clear financial gain to its enforcer while causing financial pain for its subject — I can’t imagine any scheme that could be better called exploitative.
Short of an outright shakedown, W&L apparently has little faith that its students — many of whom lived on their own during summer internships — can act responsibly and manage their own nutritional and financial needs amidst busy lifestyles. The expert class knows best.
Society at large trusts the approximately 61% of young adults (aged 18-24 years) not attending college to meet their own needs without a meal plan. The same trust and freedom is not extended to W&L’s students, supposedly some of the nation’s brightest and most capable young adults. Instead, students are now robbed of the chance to gain experience feeding themselves in the real world even as guardrails and guidance are still readily available.
The requirement is insulting to students in a number of ways. The Board of Trustees and President Dudley should act quickly to reduce the policy to its previous level. If they choose not to act, they should know that they’ve created the space for rumors to run rampant. Students and parents may nevertheless conclude that they are getting a shakedown from administrators who care more about cushioning the university’s budget than advocating for students’ best interests.
And, more grievously, additional students may pull the lever for the Biden-Harris agenda come November.
[Editor’s Note: The print version of this article incorrectly states that students last year could purchase as few as 2 meals per week; that plan applied only for fraternity members with a fraternity meal plan. Now fraternity members may purchase 5 meals through dining services for a total of 15 meals when combined with their fraternity dining plans.]
