In an effort to reevaluate on-campus meal plans, Northwestern Vice President of Student Affairs William Banis created a new ASG group that will use student feedback to establish new plans.
The group consists of Northwestern administrators, nuCuisine administrators and ten students which will address student concerns, ASG Vice President of Student Life Katie Bradford said. “We’re working to really understand how to best address students’ eating needs in the meal plan structure, whether we need to make small changes to what we currently have or to start from scratch,” she said.
This group is not the first in Northwestern history; a similar group, formed years ago, worked to create the first block plans. This new working group is the result of an ASG survey of 1000 student respondents last spring, and ASG hopes to maintain an open dialogue by visiting residence halls and colleges next week and starting a fireside campaign for more feedback on the issue.
“Right now, the goal is to reevaluate,” said Matt Bellassai, ASG Vice President of Public Relations. “It sounds pretty open-ended because we don’t exactly know what we’ll find.”
The group does not expect to have a new meal plan proposal until the end of winter quarter. According to Bellassai, the group, which has only met once so far, will meet frequently during the next two quarters to hone students’ primary concerns.
“Ideally, from ASG’s perspective, we’d like to see a change,” Bellassai said. “We’re going to go into this with the mindset that we’d like to push for change and a system that works best for students.”