Tufts partnered with local restaurants and Uber Eats to provide students with free meals over Thanksgiving break. The meal program aimed to support local businesses while ensuring that students would not have to worry about accessing or paying for food.
“We wanted to be sure food security was not a concern over this holiday,” Camille Lizarríbar, dean of student affairs,wrote in an email to the Daily.“We wanted students to be able to take a break from what has been a very different and often stressful semester and to enjoy the holiday without concerns about cost.”
The week prior, students who were planning to stay on campus during the break filled out a survey about their meal preferences and preferred pickup location.
“Students who had indicated they need meals over the break [were] asked to complete a survey to enable us to communicate and/or plan what [was] available,” Patti Klos, director of dining and business services,wrote in an email to the Daily.
Students on theMedford/Somerville campus picked up lunch and dinner on Thursday, and lunches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Gantcher Center during an assigned 30-minute pickup window. Lunch from Thursday through Sundayconsisted of a variety of selections from three local restaurants, two in Medford and one in Somerville, according to Klos.
Students at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) were offered a similar lunch program. Because of the school’s smaller size, a different restaurant provided lunch each day of the break, according to Laura DaRos, associate dean of student affairs at the SMFA.
First-year Ashley Jin said she appreciated the variety of lunch options.
“For me, the lunch food was good. They had a lot of different selections from a bunch of different local restaurants. They had noodles and pasta and different sandwiches,” she said. “It was super easy to get everything … They did a really good job of organizing everything.”
For Thanksgiving dinner, students could choose between a traditional Thanksgiving meal and several special dietary options.
For dinner on Friday and Saturday nights, students were given a $15 Uber Eats credit to use at a local restaurant of their choice, Klos said.
“[We] created a partnership with Uber Eats and Uber for Business to enable students to order dinner on Friday and Saturday night," Klos said. "The [Tufts] mobile ordering app [was] not used."
However, Jin said that many of her friends experienced technical difficulties placing orders.
“[I] called the dean [on] call through TUPD non-emergency, and me and my other two friends who were with me were also experiencing difficulty when ordering, either because we never received the email to set up a business account in the first place, so we couldn’t put down Tufts as the provider for our $15 credit, or because once they did set up the account, when purchasing food, they said there was an ‘account error,'" Jin wrote in an electronic message to the Daily.
Jin also said that even if the program worked smoothly, it may have been a burden for low-income students.
“$15 is not a lot for Uber Eats because the cheapest thing for a meal might be around $10 or under … But then you have to pay tax, tip the restaurant and tip the driver," Jin said.
About 2,050 students registered for Thanksgiving break meals, according to Klos. Students who were not on a Tufts meal plan were still able to participate in the program, and students in quarantine or isolation could place orders through the Tufts Dining app and get meals delivered to their residence.
This year’s Thanksgiving meal plan differed from that of past years.
“This is the first time meals are being offered to students over the Thanksgiving break due to the unusual circumstance of the pandemic,”Klos said. “In the past, a select group of students with the most need were provided a modest Meal Money stipend to use to acquire food during the break.”
Lizarríbar echoed Klos' sentiment and said that many offices across the university felt the need to provide dining options during the break.
“[When] the university asked students to remain on campus throughout the Thanksgiving break, there was a general consensus among several offices that we should offer the holiday dining program as a way to provide students with food options that would be different than usual, support our local restaurants and give as many dining service employees time off on and around the holiday as possible,”Lizarríbar said.
