Letters to the Editor
Minimum Nutritional Stupidity
I’ve been hearing for years that MIT people are the smartest people on the planet. Well, I’ve tried my hardest to believe this but the news about the “minimum nutritional fee” has utterly destroyed my faith. The “minimum nutritional fee” is probably the worst possible idea involving food on campus that has ever been thought and is a miserable mark of shame on our existence as an intellectual body.
MIT’s only mission in campus dining should be to feed students, period. We the students pay an outrageous amount of money for this education, and in return MIT seems hesitant when representing student interests in such critical matters like food. Why does MIT let business concerns come into play at all in this process? MIT should show some guts when it comes to getting businesses in line with student interests. I cite the enforced monopoly of New Ashdown Dining as an example.
The “minimum nutritional fee” continues this despicable trend. Instead of bringing food to the students, MIT is going to require us to spend a certain amount of money on their sanctioned monopolies. They know we want to eat healthy food, but instead of making one tiny logical step in the thought process, i.e. “let’s bring some healthy options onto campus for them,” the thought is, “let’s force them to pay money on the current bad system.” Maybe the promised option to spend the fee with coupons at Trader Joe’s is supposed to make up for it. They fail, once again, to realize that Trader Joe’s is over there and MIT is here on campus. Bring the healthy food to us. It’s not that hard.
Class of 2009