Navigating Dartmouth Dining has never been a walk in the park for disabled students. Dining locations are crowded and noisy; the A-9 station, while helpful, is not vegetarian-friendly; and if Dartmouth Dining can’t accommodate your needs, making the move to off-campus housing that would allow one to cook for themself isn’t always financially or physically feasible.
However, in a matter of weeks, Plodzik has drastically worsened food accessibility for disabled students. To add insult to injury, Dartmouth Dining communications do not address these glaring issues. Recent changes have direct and deeply harmful effects on disabled students that should have been obvious in the planning process. These effects could have been prevented had disabled students been consulted.
The new Courtyard Cafe is a nightmare for disabled students trying to customize food to their needs. Chronically ill students who cannot tolerate fried foods can no longer use their swipe on a microwavable meal when they want to meet their friends at the Hop. For students with multiple dietary restrictions, not being able to purchase whole fruits or custom-order salads at Courtyard Cafe is a huge loss, as the pre-packaged options made available to us are a mix of ingredients we can and cannot eat. Reduced variety and customizability also make it more difficult for students on appetite-altering medications to find meals that are palatable. Students concerned about allergies or cross-contamination must navigate the limited options at the kiosk instead of being able to ask workers to make essential, personalized modifications to menu options; walling off the grill prevents students from making crucial catches of mis-prepared food.
The kiosks of the Courtyard Cafe are representative of the general move towards automation across Dartmouth Dining locations. Automation disconnects students from the workers who serve their meals on a regular basis, preventing the maintenance and formation of relationships. This is a heartrending loss for all students, but disabled students in particular rely on relationships with dining staff to reduce access fatigue, which is the exhaustion resulting from continually ensuring that our needs are met. Dining staff have assisted us in preparing and locating food that won’t make us sick. They have helped us through overstimulation and panic attacks when the stress of navigating dining locations becomes overwhelming. Sometimes, the knowledge that we will see a friendly face is what helps us rally the energy to go to the Class of 1953 Commons or a cafe. Without that human connection, what was already a difficult process becomes miserable.
The wide-spread dissatisfaction with these changes is driving many students to Collis Cafe and ’53 Commons, resulting in worsening lines and crowds in all dining locations. The lines that stretch out of ’53 Commons and Collis curtail the access of anyone who cannot stand for long periods of time. The crush of bodies within these locations is overstimulating and difficult for anyone with a mobility aid to safely navigate. Additionally, the crowds pose a very real danger to immunocompromised students who must strategically avoid tightly-packed crowds.
The central cause of these problems is the unreasonable and unconscionable increase in top-down control of students’ eating habits. This curtailment of student agency is particularly harmful for students whose dining habits don't instantly make sense to the uninformed observer. Many of us prefer to eat in our rooms or take large portions of our meals to go because of aforementioned sensory sensitivities or immunocompromisation, but the installation of “Fresh Zone” machines prevent us from using our swipes to stock up on to-go items, as these machines only accept dining dollars. Pushing students towards a dining environment that favors the larger sit-down meals available through meal combos or at ’53 Commons can be hostile to the unique digestive needs of chronically ill students. Additionally, some neurodivergent students eat very repetitive or specific foods that don’t look like the “typical” meal Jon Plodzik had in mind when he designed the Courtyard Cafe combos. This is not misguided or stubborn independence on our parts; this is us, as unique yet still rational actors, asserting that we are the authorities on our own nutritional and behavioral needs.
Please, respect disabled peers as experts on our own needs. Abandon your flawed assumptions of there being a single path to a healthy and balanced life. Listen to us when we say that your “new normal” is not a change we can just adjust to without concrete harm to our physical wellness. The level of recent renovations simply does not occur without significant advance thought and planning. This makes their disastrous effects, which are antithetical to the actual needs that students have expressed, even more inexcusable. If Dartmouth Dining wants to do better, then it is absolutely imperative that they listen to student voices who represent a wide variety of needs — from neurodivergent students to those with chronic illnesses, from those with mobility needs to those with allergies — before, during and after making fundamental changes to the dining environment.
Marion Caldwell ’25 is a member of Accessible Dartmouth and Clark Paolini ’25 is the vice president. Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
