Making Our DBA Count
By Sarah Marie Hopf, Guest Columnist
Published on Wednesday, November 17, 2010
On June 3, I used my leftover DBA to donate over 150 pounds of fresh fruit, yogurt, vegetables, milk and orange juice from Dartmouth’s dining halls to Willing Hands, a local organization fighting hunger in the Upper Valley.
While some of us at Dartmouth find ourselves with unspent DBA at the end of the term, members of our local community including children, veterans and working families, find themselves unsure of from where their next meals will come.
Like other students, I had to ask myself: “What do I do with my leftover DBA?” Students have found pragmatic solutions. Some earn brownie points by buying food for friends who have run out of DBA or inviting their friends for a meal, which is a legitimate option. Others buy transportable foods to take home such as Odwalla juices, vitamin water and bubble gum for everyone in their extended family. Still others increase their food consumption or purchase more expensive foods. Yet others simply leave their DBA unused.
Inspired by professor Caroline Faria’s geography class, “Food and Power,” I decided to put my leftover DBA to use differently. Food insecurity — lack of access to enough food or adequately nutritious food — affects 8.9 percent and 13.6 percent of the New Hampshire and Vermont populations, respectively. This means that about 118,900 people in New Hampshire and 84,600 people in Vermont are only a missed paycheck or unexpected bill away from going hungry.
In addition, many people live in food deserts with limited access to fresh produce and have to rely on highly processed foods. This situation has been a major contributor to the rise in type II diabetes and our obesity epidemic. As a result, this generation may be the first one in the history of the United States to die at a younger age than their parents.
By donating fresh produce with my leftover DBA I hoped to address, in some small way, the disparities around food that exist in our community.
Willing Hands seemed to be the perfect organization for my endeavor. Throughout the Upper Valley, from Springfield, Vt., to Orford, N.H., they deliver fresh fruits and vegetables to over 50 organizations like The Upper Valley Haven and to community meals and rehabilitation programs. They also serve families and seniors in low-income housing projects free of charge on a weekly or biweekly basis. In addition, they provide nutritional advice in their interactions with recipients.
I would like to spark a conversation about how Dartmouth students could turn DBA into food for people in need in the Upper Valley throughout the year. I am not alone. In the past months, I have talked with many students from across campus who are dissatisfied with the current system and who are keen on finding a better way to use up leftover DBA or to use their DBA to make a positive impact on our community. I have also raised the issue in conversations with faculty and staff. In addition, opportunities for students to use DBA in productive ways would probably reduce the amount of wasteful and frantic spending at the end of the term as students could put their leftover DBA to good use.
Dartmouth students and Dartmouth College as a whole could thus have a sustained impact on and further build a positive relationship with the local community, fighting hunger and obesity and contributing to community health by providing nutritious foods to people in need.
I am currently working with the administration to find a way for students to use DBA to have a positive impact on our community. Join the conversation. Hunger does not affect only developing countries; it is a problem right here in the Upper Valley. Together let’s make our DBA count for ourselves and our community.
This doesn’t get at the core issue with DBA, which is that we are required to pay a fixed amount for a meal plan that well exceeds what many of us actually need. Sure, donating the DBA if you have a lot left over is a great thing to do, but it would be even better if we could choose how much we wanted to spend in the first place.
By Anonymous on Nov 17 | 10:20 am
We’re getting screwed over by DDS anyway: someone might as well get some good out of it.
By Anonymous on Nov 17 | 10:46 am
Sarah, I think the idea you raise in this article presents a very selfless way for students to spend their remaining DBA. You should be praised for your philanthropic spirit, and anyone able and willing to donate to the needy in the Upper Valley should have an easy means of doing so. However, I am troubled by the fact that students have “leftover DBA” to begin with. That students are pressured to spend what’s left in their account indicates that it should probably not be in their account in the first place.
The College needs a reasonable expectation of the amount of food to buy in any given term. Requiring students to purchase a meal plan creates a level of security for them. But for students living on a tight budget, the loss of the remaining balance in their Topside DBA account each term and regular DBA each year presents a problem.
Sure, students could get a smaller plan for next term, could ask the cashier to draw money from their Topside DBA account, or could try to spend their DBA more evenly throughout the term. Instead of imposing a tax on the uniformed who do not do this, why doesn’t the College seek to create a framework to prevent such waste? This issue impacts students on a tight budget (it is expensive), students who care about sustainability (it causes wastefulness), students who would prefer to eat off-campus (it brings them back again to DDS), and is just plain inefficient (“Do you want this on Topside?”).
Not to offer a problem without a solution, I present this idea: Allow Topside DBA to rollover into regular DBA at the end of each term. As a matter of financial aid policy, the College can only provide so much money per term to non-food expenses. That’s why Topside expires each term. If the money starts in this pot each term, shouldn’t it go back there, rather than expiring? Next, at the end of the year, apply leftover DBA to any outstanding fees, including zeroing any deficit in DA$H, then return as much as possible to the student. If the College needs to recoup costs from purchasing perishable goods or labor, then perhaps a percentage could be withheld, but the lion’s share should be given back to the person who paid for the plan in the first place.
Giving back to the community is a great way to spend leftover DBA under the current regime, but why should students be pressured to do so in the first place? I fully support your charitable effort but strongly believe that a truly “pragmatic solution” is to fix the skewed incentives created by the College in the first place.
By William R. Hix on Nov 17 | 10:48 am
I think it might interest people to know that, according to a recent conversation with a DDS administrator, the average student has less that $5 left-over on their DBA and that there are more students going negative than there are students who end the term with a positive balance.
By James B. Lee on Nov 17 | 12:13 pm
James, that often happens after people overspend, stock up on VitaminWater, use their DDS to donate to charity, and otherwise spend it in ways that they might not if that balance were not to expire at the end of each term. Even if that is true of the “average student,” the purpose of the type of policy change I proposed is to address the atypical student, the uninformed student, the apathetic student, basically students on the margin who would rather worry about academics than zeroing out the balance of a DBA account which they are required by the College to purchase each term.
By William R. Hix on Nov 17 | 12:25 pm
It would be nice if that money were refunded to parents, who after all paid the money in the first place!
By jenthr on Nov 17 | 1:18 pm
Mr. Hix, you’re viewing this through a different lens than Sarah-Marie here. The point of this column is not to protest poorly thought-out DDS policy that indeed warrants protesting but to call attention to the wider fact that we’re not alone in worrying about our budgets allocated for food. In fact, many of our neighbors are often faced with impossible choices between, say, choosing to buy the next semester’s textbooks for a school-aged child or to pay the heating bill for a winter month and putting enough food on the table for the family. Hunger is very real, and it happens at home.
By Eleven on Nov 17 | 3:14 pm
I’m confused why we’re trying to protect the “uninformed…, apathetic student”. Why not try to be informed about your finances?
By Anonymous on Nov 17 | 4:44 pm
General philosophic question: Should people who are receiving the charity of financial aid be, at the same time, giving away portions of this money, provided by others, no matter how noble the cause? This applies to ALL Dartmouth students, because even those paying full tuition have a substantial portion of their education subsidized by others. A better solution… donate your time and intellect rather than your DBA to help the less fortunate; this is much harder to do, but also more ethical.
By Anonymous on Nov 17 | 8:23 pm
i don’t think any students worry more about zeroing out their DBA than academics.
By Anonymous on Nov 18 | 12:46 am