Show me the money

Why are our Dining Services so bad? Most students are quick to blame Aramark Corp. -- the company that runs Penn's Dining Services -- and I did too because it's natural.

But I no longer believe Aramark is to blame.

I now think that Penn is solely responsible for the failure of our dining system because I suspect that Penn is siphoning money from the dining program.

While I have no facts to prove my theory, look at my circumstantial and logical evidence and decide for yourself.

Tuesday afternoon I placed a call to Richard Johnson, the director of Housing and Dining Services at Virginia Tech. Johnson is also a former Aramark employee who ran a number of dining services at other colleges before coming to VT.

VT's dining plan is cheap, less than $10 per meal and is one of the most popular dining systems in higher education.

With his experience, Johnson had much to share about dining systems.

"The way it often happens is that a university sells you a meal plan for $1,800, and they then pay the contractor $1,400, $1,300 or whatever for the plan," he said. "The difference between that $1,300 and $1,800 per semester goes back to the school."

He added that schools often say they will use the money for utilities or other purposes, but "there's a significant portion going to other purposes. The school probably makes more profit than the contractor does.

"It's like a slush fund."

The worst case of this behavior he had heard of while at Aramark occurred at Marshall University in West Virginia, where the school "took approximately 55 percent of what students paid them right off the top. The contractor got 45 percent.

"If students knew about this practice, they'd have a fit," Johnson said.

You're damn right they'd have a fit. I'm having one right now.

But wait, there's more. Universities profit on "the missed meal factor" -- unused meals at the end of the semester. They make money on wasted meals because they know statistically how many meals people will likely miss, but they force people to buy those meals anyway.

Rhea Lewis, a Penn Business Services spokeswoman, more or less admitted that Penn does this. "You're not billed for 125 meals; you're billed for fewer. ... If you use them all, you're coming out ahead."

Don't see the problem?

The most popular meal plan, Liberty, costs $1,476 for 125 meals after factoring out Dining Dollars, which allow students to purchase food a la carte. That's $11.81 a meal.

However, as Lewis said, they're planning for less than 125 meals, which means that each meal you eat in the dining hall costs more than $11.81. Johnson told me that, in his experience, students miss 25 percent of meals on average. For Penn students, that translates into $15.50 a meal.

So if in fact Penn is paying Aramark less than $15.50 per meal they produce, a significant portion of your meal plan fee is going to the University and not into your food.

Here's some more to chew on.

Students at Virginia Tech pay $9.85 or less for meals they love -- including sometimes getting, and no joke here, "unlimited lobster" -- Johnson said.

Students at Bowdoin College, the highest rated dining service in the country according to The Princeton Review, pay $7.74 per meal. Students at Cornell University, ranked fourth, eat meals prepared by "certified chefs" --- people who went to cooking school -- and they pay about what we pay. Also, Cornell doesn't force anyone to get a meal plan, yet they have nearly 10,000 people signed up.

We clearly aren't getting meals worth $11.81 because for that much money we should be able to eat a lot better than we are. Where then is all the money going? I have two hypotheses.

n Aramark is greedy and/or incompetent. I don't believe the former because its overall operating margin is only 2.6 percent, according to the company's financial statements. I don't believe the latter because companies don't become a multi-billion dollar food service empire by not knowing how to run a business

n Penn is siphoning a portion of the meal-plan money into another part of the University.

If the latter is what's happening, then it's bad for several reasons.

First, it's dishonest. If money is going to other places, then those paying should know.

Second, it's preventing upperclassmen from enjoying a quality dining hall experience, an experience most of us would like to have. Students are missing out on the social opportunities and convenience of residential dining.

So Penn, are our Dining Services a slush fund? Are they just a money funnel to some other part of the University? Spokeswoman Lewis didn't answer that question, saying instead that "we can't disclose the terms of our contact for legal reasons."

Neither did Aramark spokeswomen Julie Camardo or Jenn Martin.

Fine, I'll ask it again. How much of the $1,876 freshmen pay per semester is going to dining and dining-related expenses?

We deserve to know.

Alex Weinstein is a junior history major from Bridgeport, W.V. Straight to Hell appears on Thursdays.

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