The new dining hall renovations announced this winter have drawn a wide variety of objections from the student body. With criticism ranging from costs to lack of student input, nearly all aspects of these changes have received attention. One controversial aspect of the plan that has skirted by relatively unexamined, however, has been the enhanced control of student nutrition by College administrators. These new changes to nutrition include reducing plate, cup and tray sizes in an effort to curb overeating ("Dining plan costs freshmen more," March 8). While these adjustments aim to improve nutrition, they nonetheless go too far in attempting to dictate the personal behavior of students. Alas, they reveal a larger problem that exists on campus: the administration does not trust students to make decisions for themselves as exemplified by the College's approach to combat binge drinking on campus.
The College's new handholding approach to dining is an affront to students' decision-making abilities. By limiting plate size, College administrators apparently do not trust students to control their own consumption. By changing what food is served, college administrators apparently do not trust students to choose what to eat.
In attempting to justify these changes, Director of Dining Services David Newlove reveals just how little the administration expects of students. Defending the plan, Newlove references former Tuck School of Business professor Brian Wansick's research, "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think," in which Wansick showed that "changing the size of plates from 12 to 10 inches decreased how much people ate by 23 percent." But Dartmouth students are not merely statistics on an excel spreadsheet. Treating them as such is demeaning and pedantic. While the math may show that changing the way food is served "is a tremendous way' to decrease food costs, waste and obesity," it is also a tremendous way of treating 20-year-olds like children. And while smaller plates may "cut down on the inclination to overeat," the change compels students to feel as though administrators do not trust them to take care of themselves.
Perhaps even worse, these changes will ultimately fail to reduce overeating just as Student Event Management Procedures another overregulation of student behavior by College administrators has failed to significantly combat the persistent problem of binge drinking. Despite regulating the number of total and tapped kegs permitted, the number of cocktails mixed at a time and the type of alcohol served at parties, the administration has failed to curb binge drinking on campus. Making decisions for students is clearly not the solution.
Not all of the proposed changes to the dining hall, however, go too far in dictating students' decisions or are bound to be unsuccessful. One positive change made by the Dartmouth Dining Services is to accompany food with nutritional data that students can download. Providing students with beneficial information is a welcome addition that allows students to make their own decisions and influence their own eating behavior. Akin to providing students with information about alcohol poisoning and where to find help, these types of decisions in which the College merely provides information as a resource are the most powerful and beneficial to students. These types of policies that respect students by treating them like adults have proven successful in the past. A rise in Good Sam calls over the years, for example, has revealed not that binge drinking has gotten worse, but rather that when the College gives out information about alcohol and safety, students make the right decision to save friends and fellow students in need of help.
Shedding light on these insulting changes will hopefully show College administrators that students do not want the College involved in every aspect of their personal lives. In both alcohol policy and dining hall nutrition, the College has proven to extend its reach too far into the personal lives of students. And time has shown that these types of overbearing and insulting changes inevitably fall short of correcting the initial problem. Instead of deciding for students the number of kegs they can tap at one time or what size plates they are allowed to eat off of, the College should simply provide information so students can make their own informed decisions. That is, after all, how we go about learning inside classrooms. As students and as adults, it should be how we go about learning outside of them as well.
