When Barnard students return next semester, they will all be on a mandated meal plan, a departure from the current policy, which only requires first-years and residents of certain dorms to buy a meal plan.
“The changes were made for a combination of financial needs, to support the operation of the new facility, and the desire to strengthen campus community,” Dean Denburg said.
Commuter students, who make up roughly 1 percent of the student population, will be required to purchase a meal plan. The cheapest option, the “convenience plan,” costs $300 a semester.
Now, months after the issue of a required meal plan was first raised, Barnard administrators confirmed that the plan will be implemented, with some alterations.
Following Monday’s Student Government Association meeting—at which the council and members of the Facebook group “Protect Your Right to Be off the Meal Plan” debated the Barnard administration’s proposal to make meal plans mandatory—today’s open forum with Barnard President Debora Spar drove home both the practicality and the inevitability of the policy.
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.
