The Marketplace board-plan defies all logic, and many basic principles of economics. It's a first-rate anomaly.
In all honesty, where else do you consistently spend nine months paying nine dollars a pop for meals you don't eat? Anywhere but a university campus, it would be considered an act of lunacy.
It appears as though the inefficiency of the current Marketplace board-plan, which provides five breakfasts, five dinners and two weekend brunches for $1,380 per semester, has finally dawned on Director of Dining Services, Jim Wulforst. Discussion is currently heading in the direction of eliminating weekday breakfasts from the meal plan, allowing students to pay on points for those meals instead. This change is long overdue, and will release students from a financially exploitative meal plan designed to raise finances for other projects indirectly at first-year students' expense.
The board-plan currently forces all freshmen to pay for 12 meals per week. Expecting students to eat both breakfast and dinner at the Marketplace every weekday, and attend brunch on both Saturdays and Sundays is unreasonable for several reasons.
First, a great number of college students do not eat breakfast. Many individuals are simply not awake in time to do so, have early classes or simply wait for lunch after attending class. The grab and go option that was recently implemented catered well to some students, but by and large, breakfast has not been nor will be a popular mealtime.
Furthermore, expecting freshmen to take all their meals on East is a fallacy. West campus has a score of more diverse and appealing dining options, and students with classes or commitments on West will certainly opt to eat there with some degree of frequency.
The seven meal plan, in contrast is quite realistic. Eating dinner at the Marketplace is an important part of the community-building experience, and many students end up there many times a week out of sheer convenience. By continuing to make students pay for dinnertime meals in advance, they will retain a financial incentive to go regularly and eat with their peers. Brunches have consistently been the most popular times to eat at the Marketplace, so it makes sense to keep them on the plan.
The income generated from the 12-meal plan helps to pay the bank note for construction on the East Union Building, where the Marketplace is housed--an obligation that should not be ignored. However, it is not right to raise the funds by forcing freshmen to pay for meals that dining officials know they will, by and large, not eat.
The seven meal board-plan is a reasonable compromise. With any luck, giving students the option of choosing which meals to pay for will give the Marketplace added incentive to improve the quality of its food offerings. Many students are dissatisfied with the meals, and with the policy of pre-paid meals, the Marketplace has little reason to cater to student needs. When sales are not directly tied to quality, problems arise.
The Marketplace is an integral part of the first-year experience, and some meals should be pre-paid. However, Duke students are smart enough to know when they are being offered a raw deal, and they deserve better.
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