What a Dining Plan Can Do--Housemaster

Guest Blogger: Steven Hall ’80, SM ’82, ScD ’85, Aeronautics and Astronautics Professor and Simmons Hall associate housemaster

When I was an MIT undergrad in the late ’70s, I lived in the inaugural class of Random Hall. At the time, we could eat in Lobdell Dining Hall, which at the time was a prototypical cafeteria-style dining hall—a queue with trays, one or two specials, not much choice. Or, because Random had kitchens, we could cook for ourselves. Frankly, many of us spent a lot of time at the sub shop across Mass. Ave., run by a lovely Greek couple. In many ways, not a lot has changed over the years. The sub shop on Mass. Ave. has changed hands, and the Internet has made it easier to get food delivered, but fundamentally our students still don’t have access to a high-quality dining plan.

For the past year, I’ve been part of two groups—each made up of students, faculty housemasters, and staff—working to develop a new dining plan for MIT. The first committee, the House Dining Advisory Group, recommended a new meal plan to the MIT administration last spring. The second, the RFP Evaluation Committee, was tasked this spring with assessing each of the three vendors who were bidding to operate the new program.

We hit a major milestone this week when the Institute announced that the Bon Appétit Management Company has been selected to operate the new dining program.

If you’ve followed MIT news for the past four decades, you know that arguments over dining are the norm, not the exception. This process was no different. It was contentious—and it probably should have been. If you’re making a decision and it’s not contentious, it’s probably not a very important decision. Or the right decision is stunningly obvious. Judging from the heat generated by this process, I’d say dining and community is pretty important to the MIT community.

I think a lot of students are concerned about losing things at MIT that they value. They’re right to be concerned about that. But I think the plan provides something at MIT that our academic peers offer their students but that we have not until now: a high-quality dining program that serves more than a few meals a week.

At other schools, the fact that there are excellent dining halls makes a big difference. You can just see the sense of community that’s there. People take the time to eat together. They sit down to chat with their friends, and, because service is all-you-care-to-eat, they can get up and get more or different food. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere. When you are at those schools you see something that you don’t see at MIT: lots of students who are relaxed, who are happy to sit down and have a conversation, who are eating well.

We see glimpses of that at MIT, but not enough. As the associate housemaster of Simmons Hall, I live alongside the students. I see too many of them eating take-out food alone in their rooms every night. In one sense that’s okay, but in another sense they’ve opted out of their community experience. When you have a community in which everyone dines together, it’s a different, more cohesive atmosphere.

Has MIT made the right decision? I think so, but time will tell. I can tell you that we have something new at MIT, something that hasn’t been available to any student at MIT since my arrival on campus 34 years ago—the availability of a genuine dining plan. It’s a great moment for MIT, and I hope and expect that the new plan will serve our community well.