Last week, Vice President and Treasurer Eric Runestad and Associate Vice President for Campus Services Jesse Cashman announced major campus dining changes in the Carleton Today newsletter. The changes include increasing the fresh fruit options in the dining halls, allowing for two meal equivalencies on the 20 Meal plan instead of just one, extending the dinner meal equivalency time slot to 8:30 p.m., installing more fresh vending machines around campus and decreasing the price of the 7 Meal plan by approximately $400 with $125 dining dollars.
While Runestad said that “changes to the board plan are effective next fall,” the addition of fresh vending machines and fruit is already being implemented.
“The fresh fruit is something that is changing as the project develops, and there are already more options that I’ve seen,” Dining Board Student Liaison Suwannee Conroy-Baarsch ’26 said. In terms of fresh vending “a new location will be put in at Sayles over this summer, and there have been conversations about putting one in Anderson.”
CSA and student advocates brought these suggestions to the Dining Board. Conroy-Baarsch said that “all the meal plan changes are to help make sure that students have access to meals.”
The meal equivalency modification arose from student athlete feedback, which initiated the first discussions of altering the meal plan. Student athletes train most days of the week, and a large number of those practices are held in the evening to accommodate classes and labs. Resultantly, eating in the dining hall after practices is nearly impossible. Extending the dinner meal equivalency to 8:30 p.m. caters to their jam-packed schedules.
Adding to this initiative is the Dining Board’s plan to expand the number of fresh vending machines around campus. The convenient nature of vending machines make them ideal for students getting snacks outside of the normal dining hall hours. Because the vending machines only offer chips and candy, the Dining Board says they hope to add other options to students getting snacks late at night.
With the addition of fresh vending machines, the Dining Board said they hope that students will “have access to healthier, more meal-like food, especially in locations or at times when they aren’t usually accessible,” said Conroy-Baarsch.
The cost of the seven-meal plan has faced longstanding backlash by students. Conroy-Baarsch deemed it such a contested issue that it was one of the reasons she joined the Board in the first place. Last term, she sent out a survey to the Carleton community asking for feedback about the meal plans, specifically regarding their costs, in response to the policy that first-years and sophomores were no longer able to go off board, and the new seven-meal plan. For the 2024-25 academic year, the seven meal plan cost $1,677 per term with $150 dining dollars. With the reduction, it will cost $1,542 per term for the 2025-26 academic year, with $125 dining dollars.
Conroy-Baarsch said that her goal was to reduce the price of the seven-meal plan to help students afford the new requirement. However, she said that “the decrease was not as much as I was hoping, although every little bit does help to some degree.”
While not as pressing as meal plan costs, expanding the variety of fresh fruit has been in the minds of many students who say they are tired of eating cantaloupe every morning for breakfast. This proposal was kickstarted by Seth Vizel ’28, Conroy-Baarsch’s fellow student liaison to the Dining Board, and a few students on CSA who sent out a feedback survey and later brought the issue up to the Board. The increase in fresh fruit options is intended to fulfill the same goal as fresh vending: providing students with opportunities for healthier and more balanced meals.
Conroy-Baarsch concluded by advising students to make their voices heard.
“Dining services are pretty receptive to student feedback and ideas,” she said. “It seems like a lot of projects have been done in the past because of students wanting to implement a change.”
Runestad said, “Student feedback is important to the success of our campus dining program. The survey and office hours noted in the Carleton Today article are great ways for students to make their voices heard.”
The upcoming office hours this term will be held on May 22nd during Thursday common time, in the Class of ’51 Dining Room in the Language and Dining Center.