Tensions ran high Monday night when a group of Barnard students showed up at a Student Government Association meeting to question the motives behind the administration’s recent decision to implement a universal meal plan.
At a meeting in the new Diana Center, SGA met with members of the Facebook group “Protect Your Right To Be Off the Meal Plan,” which was formed in opposition to Barnard’s mandatory meal plan for the 2010-2011 academic year.
The dining change, announced in December, requires upper-class students to participate in what administrators call a “limited meal plan.” Prior to this initiative, a meal plan was only required for first year residents, and for any students who lived in the quad.
The anti-meal plan group presented complaints on Monday about SGA’s lack of effectiveness and openness with students concerning the administration’s plans. “Why didn’t SGA then e-mail the student body and inform the student body that this was even happening?” asked Francesca Procaccini, BC ’10.
SGA president Katie Palillo, BC ’10, said she has met numerous times with administrators, including Dean of Barnard College Dorothy Denburg and Chief Operating Officer Greg Brown. In these meetings, she said, she raised issues of allergies and overcrowding. “There are ongoing discussions on and we will continue to support students,” Palillo said.
But Procaccini responded that meeting with administrators would not be enough to change their minds. “These are the reasons that people think this whole plan is absolutely ridiculous,” she said.
She also criticized the way the administration handled the meal plan in general. “It was blatantly wrong that the students be presented with the meal plan in an e-mail,” she said. Denburg, in her first e-mail announcing the new plan, said that the meal plan is designed to foster community at Barnard, but Procaccini said that the administration should admit that the motives are financial. “If it’s about the money, then it should be presented that way. It’s a flagrant disrespect of the community,” she said.
Daphne Larose, BC ’10, Senior Representative to the Board of Trustees, also alleged that the impetus for the universal meal plan was fiscal.
Procaccini brought up rumors that SGA had known about this plan before other students. Junior class president Lara Avsar, BC ’11, and University Senator Emily Kenison, BC ’11, said that they consulted with administrators last year about a universal meal plan. “My first reaction to it was ‘Absolutely not,’” Avsar said. “I’m a pretty loud-spoken person ... and I hope to think that [they] took to heart the things that I said.”
“What makes you so convinced they’re going to listen to you in subsequent meetings?” asked Melissa Repko, BC ’10 and former editor in chief of Spectator. “I want to see results,” she added.
The anti-meal plan group currently boasts 651 Facebook members. “A third of the Barnard population that will actually be affected by the meal plan is a part of the group,” Procaccini said.
Members Hayley Negrin, BC ’10 and former managing editor of The Eye magazine, and Ashley Asti, BC ’12, both cited health reasons in their opposition. Negrin and Asti have severe food allergies that do not permit them to eat in Hewitt Dining Hall or Liz’s Café. Asti said the only food she can eat from Hewitt is Cheerios.
Negrin said the plan should not be mandatory if some students cannot eat in the main dining facilities. “It cannot be mandatory for people with severe allergic restrictions,” she said. “I’m here because I cannot let any other poor Barnard girl go through what I went through,” she said, citing her own experience with allergies.
Sophomore class president Bo Yun Park, BC ’12, said there should be a middle ground. “Your definition of compromise right now is eradication of the meal plan,” she told the protestors. Instead, she suggested a “meal plan, but not for people with allergies,” a solution that both sides agreed would cater to students’ needs.
“This is 651 people who don’t want a modification of the plan as is; they want a reversal of this,” Procaccini said.
But Larose said in response to some of the calls for change, “We want to work with you, but, at the same time, we also have to find the balance between the administrators.”
At Palillo’s request, the group laid out its main objectives. Procaccini asked SGA “to write a resolution and address the concerns that we brought up … to put that in writing and sign it and put the SGA seal on it.” She also expressed a desire to use campus publications as a forum for expressing student opinions about the meal plan and asked SGA to publicly criticize the administration for not listening to SGA’s own opinions.
Palillo advocated “a really active correspondence” to continue a more productive dialogue between the students and SGA. The discussion will continue at an open forum about the meal plan on Feb. 4.
Elizabeth Scott contributed reporting.
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