Tufts Dining has introduced a slew of changes for the school year, including a new “late lunch” period from 2 p.m.–5 p.m., a pledge to increase food diversity and updates to the meal plans available to students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. The policies are a result of collaboration with the Tufts Community Union Senate and were officially implemented at the start of the semester.
“Munch time” aims to increase access to food at Tufts
The new late lunch period allows students to use four meal swipes throughout the day, an increase from the previous limit of three. The policy is a response to students’ frustrations after Tufts Dining chose not to reinstate its double swipe policy last year, which allowed students to use up to two meal swipes during each meal period.
Patti Klos, director of Tufts Dining, said that the addition of a fourth lunch period is meant to improve students’ access to food on campus.
“Lunch is six hours long. It’s from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m., and then dinner starts at 5 [p.m.] and ends whenever we close,” Klos said. “I felt like a better way to give students more access would be to break up the lunch hour into two periods.”
Klos explained that the terminology to denote the second lunch period is not yet set in stone. While students utilizing the period can select the “Late Lunch” option on the Transact Mobile Ordering app used for dining when placing their order, there is discussion over whether or not calling the period “munch time” is preferable.
“Others thought, well, let’s call it ‘munch time,’ because people are hungry in the afternoon. I know all of the other connotations it has, just like I’m aware of the abbreviation students like to use for [The Joyce] Cummings Center, but we didn’t want that to deter us, because words can be used in multiple ways that convey broader meaning.”
The double meal swipe policy was terminated in September 2023, when Tufts reverted back to its pre-COVID-19 policy that allowed a maximum of one meal swipe per meal period. Klos said that the double swipe policy was a temporary adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic and was meant to help students obtain enough food without needing to frequent dining centers as often.
TCU President Joel Omolade, a senior expressed hope that the double swipe policy will eventually be reimplemented.
“Ideally, going back to those double meal swipes would be really great and help support a lot of students. And hopefully maybe one day that policy goes back,” Omolade said. “But as of right now, I think [the new meal period] shows a great middle ground and a great opportunity to really utilize and make sure that students are getting a bang for their buck.”
Klos said she hopes that more students will frequent Tufts Dining locations as a result of the new policy.
“Our hope is that we will see an uptick in the time period from [3 p.m.–5 p.m.] in particular. … We’ll be looking at that data over the semester.”
Students have found locations such as Hodgdon Food-on-the-Run to be more congested throughout the first few weeks of the semester, putting a strain on dining workers. Harshit Pal, a sophomore and the student manager of Hodge, addressed these concerns.
“I would say [we have] slightly more traffic just because it’s becoming more and more congested,” Pal said. “We’ve dealt with congested times in the past. This is nothing new to us. … It’s a little rough right now.”
However, Pal said he believes that the congestion is mainly because dining locations are understaffed, rather than a direct effect of the new late lunch period.
“The reason why we are so congested [is that] we don’t have enough students right now. We need more workers and that’s [legitimately] the bottom line of it,” Pal said. “That’s why we don’t have Late Night [at Commons] open right now, [because for] Late Night we [need more] student workers.”
Tufts Dining pledges to increase food diversity, introduces new meal plan options at SMFA
In addition to “munch time,” Tufts Dining has also introduced several other changes in collaboration with the TCU Senate, including a pledge to increase the diversity of foods at Tufts by 10%. The pledge is the result of advocacy from the TCU Senate’s Food Diversity Subcommittee, spearheaded by TCU Senators Tolulope Adewumi, a senior, and Kunal Botla, a sophomore.
Omolade, who was also a part of the subcommittee, highlighted the importance of culinary inclusivity at Tufts.
“We were able to do a lot of great work with communicating with administration about a lot of our needs when it comes to making sure that the food that we’re eating is diverse and also culturally appropriate,” Omolade said. “Sometimes Tufts likes to try different foods or different cultures, which is really great. … But in the same vein, you also want to make sure that the food you’re making is appropriate, because food is home for a lot of individuals on our campus.”
Tufts Dining also added new meal plan options for students on the SMFA campus, which are meant to better accommodate the needs of dual-degree students who have classwork on both campuses. SMFA students who are sophomores or above living on the Medford/Somerville campus now have access to a “hybrid plan,” which includes 100 meal swipes that are usable at Fresh at Carmichael Dining Center and Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center, as well as $325 in SMFA “meal money” that can be used at all Tufts dining locations.
Klos explained that these policies reflect the challenges of providing diverse dining options across different campuses.
“When you’re on the SMFA campus, you can use a meal equivalent, but the café is not the same size as Dewick for example,” Klos said. “Because of that, it can’t offer the same variety of food and things like that. So we do what we can to offer enough variety.”
