Dormcon General Body Meeting Minutes
Date: February 24, 2022
Time: 6:30pm et
Location: Simmons MPR
Food: indian food
caragay: normally updates in the beginning but we are doing updates last because we have two special guests today!
mark: we’re gonna talk about meal plans which was 2.5 years ago. move through some slides real quick and then you can ask questions. i went back through all the work from august 2019 through march. pulled out some important slides. first time that dining. we never shared any financial information. you’re gonna see a bunch of financial information. ton of info in the tech. they actually covered a bunch of info. very very accurate. mostly taken from these slides.
mark: [first slide] so she [suzy] handed this thing to us. sarah (old dormcon prez) was on it. hohs. a bunch of people. it was fairly narrow at first. w20 dining. new meal plans had started year before and we were getting lots of feedback about it. this was initial info from working group.
[second slide] so here’s a bunch of numbers. see on the bottom that’s the revenue 9.4 million. these were all the plans back then. 6 under the dining halls. 10 under rest. forecasted was 9.4 million that year. never had this kind of info available before. was at two public institutions before and this was a standard presentation done to student govt there.
[third slide] revenues costs. biggest chunk is labor. 62%. what’s important to keep in mind. all the staff you see upstairs. they’re all part of local 26. and they do a great job of bargaining for good pay. generally in the restaurant or food industry labor is generally the largest cost. capital reserve over here usually 5%. to fix stuff. whether you see bc. new house. all of these construction projects cost much. we’re never part of those improvements so we always have to bank on this kind of stuff. heather is working on fixing the dishwasher machine in the basement of maseeh. any guesses? we think it’s gonna be a million. this was for this fiscal year. the next fiscal year. pandemic vassar was gonna open up, was gonna be 2.6 million. one of hte ideas that i actually brought up at hdc today. there were more programmatics. next house was the trade breakfast for late night program. wasn’t the programmatic meal plan piece. those costs two years ago were fairly even. HoHs tend to have breakfast in their houses. but it might be worth talking about everywhere trading off late night for breakfast.
[fourth slide] so none of us were here for this. this wouldve been for what class of 2021. these were the meal plans being phased out when i got here january of 2018. there was a separate working group in 2017 that looked at this model. couple of things. interesting flashback here. anyone who was back in maseeh notice something interesting in that column? everyone said maseeh was being penalized. maseeh had higher minimum than everyone else. so basic plan. breakfast and dinner. any plan was any meal you want. so the basic plans were a little less cost than the any plans. but we also know that breakfast is least utilized. this whole model essentially transformed into the block model which is so many meals a week that was applied to every single dining house. because it’s breakfast lunch and dinner this is why they did that which was the argument given to me. this is kinda what we’re going back to. how many weeks in a semester? 15.7. 14 is close to 225. 12 is close to 190. so the model you’re looking at right now is a return to the weekly totals now except it’s now a block model. week plans are the worst plan. the other component recommended out of the working group was looking at the dining dollars.
[fifth slide] so dining dollars is part of this change 2 years ago. required across every single meal plan. so this year because of this change (and no one really knows that we made this change). students this year don’t notice the change that was made to remove dining dollars so students are paying less. 948k per fall and spring semester. the any 19 plan. the original model you see it just says 225. this was presented to dormcon and public forum and we found out that athletic teams need an any 19. so that was the last change that came out before we closed campus and headed back to the hills. so this phase in grid on the right. return to that 2017 model. that’s the model that wouldve been out for the class of 2024. these numbers are 2+ years old now. it wasn’t really about getting the red (deficit) back to zero. food and labor have gone up about 18%. so these numbers were hopeful numbers.
question: what happened with the any 19? you said athletes need it
mark: right so original plan was what you see here 225, 190. but the athletes said they needed an any 19 so it was a last minute add. but the couple athletes that we talked to said we should keep the any 19. that’s why it’s highlighted. wasn’t even back in there until march.
question: so athletes are consistently getting any 19?
mark: there’s some privacy and we don’t really look at those numbers but we heard from the baker HoHs. the other thing we dropped off was the 30 and the 45. the grad students were asking for the 30 plan so that might be something to talk about. i think actually someone in simmons wanted to do a pilot for a semester as a cook for yourself building. but all those folks upstairs would lose their jobs. but there was a full table of ideas. like the late night tradeoff for breakfast. but my biggest takeaway is that sharing all this information in the frame at least is showing why we’re in the hole. i found a report from 1997 that was a meal plan report with retail dining, even outside the houses and catering conversations. if i take out the names we have the same problems. we still are trying to solve these problems.
caragay: i have a couple questions about the current state. the initial goal is trying to be less in a deficit. now looks like this is a 1 million in deficit. is this where we want to be or are we still going to try to decrease the deficit.
mark hayes: no it’s not exactly where we want to be but these past two years with the pandemic. it was $25 a meal last year with all the carryout. and people aren’t just taking out one meal it’s like four meals. so it just perpetuates this problem. historically there’s always been some subsidy supporting the dining program. unless we ran this like our peers. if you go to harvard or yale they have one plan. but this is not how we are going to solve the problem here. that’s not the culture here. there’s the cook for yourself community and stuff. and that’s the challenge. that’s why we’re tweaking to drop dining dollars and yeah.
caragay: 2 followup questions. are you right now at the state where in a couple years you’re gonna followup and see whether you’re going to try to go from 1 million to 500k in deficit.
mark hayes: yea but it won’t be for a couple years. we can’t get an interested party in opening the dunkin location. so it’s gonna be a couple years. we don’t even know the steady state. so i think there’s not…it’s a lot of work. i don’t think it’s gonna end up being something that helps right away. lots of chefs coming on board. the other piece that i thought was interesting. there’s over 300 cook for yourself students that sign up for meal plans. so i think there’s an opportunity is there if the accessibility is better the quality and the hours are better. grad students the largest number ever signed up there. by pouring all those dining dollars out. 2/3 of those are spent in the student center. dunkin can’t hire enough people to open. anna’s can’t hire enough people to open. the people who are interested at least are asking about the numbers that come in. and they’re underwhelmed.
tina: i was wondering about the possibility of using the dining swipes to buy food in the retail spaces.
mark: so this is easy if there’s one company running this all. but there’s like 9 retail companies. and bon appetit’s money is not anna’s money or la verdis money. so those swipe models work when there is only provider.
someone: I thought the retail locations like those in stata are run by us. and sloan
mark: sloan is BA they’re under the same umbrella company but they’re separate entities. and hayden courtyard cafe is pacific street. there are so many companies. and the more flexibility the more cost.
question: wondering about anna’s and dunkin not being able to come back in at full capacity. but many of the cambridge places have reduced hours
mark: dunkin was actually the first to open last summer. and their hours are no different than last summer and they haven’t been able to hire. cambridge has a higher minimum wage. in restaurants like that the margins are so small that they can’t pay as many people. anna’s spent two months trying to hire last summer. smaller restaurants are struggling because the pandemic and the wage is going up. it’s tough. not just in the hourly positions but the chefs here as well. can’t find people to do that. there’s an exodus in this industry. we get a working group to work in spot in the student center. it’s not gonna work. so we have a lot of work ahead campus wide. the other thing is also maybe we have too many places on campus. even the food trucks. asian bistro outside of stata. they’re out of business. even the food trucks who don’t have fixed building costs can’t survive.
mohan: this might be an anecdotal idea. since new vassar opened up with a dining hall would this help to reduce some costs.
mark: i know there was some oscillation back and forth about hybrid or not. with vassar. so those cooks upstairs are 30+ an hour. they’ve been generally self sufficient. they have to be able to make their money at the end of the day. the union positions. they’re driving the cost.
heather: we have record numbers of grad students and cook for yourself students opting into the meal plans so that’s also somewhere we can bring in more revenue.
mark: i’d prefer to see smaller things. like the launchpad helping startup businesses. local businesses.
caragay: you said you don’t imagine building more dining halls for undergrads. do you imagine having any fewer?
mark: fewer? idk. i only have been here four years. i’m looking at what makes sense. food in general there’s a different model. ghost kitchens. ordering. delivery. robotic delivery we looked into a couple years ago. so the technology. nothing is going to get cheaper which is unfortunate. i think we have some soul searching to do.
heather: you’re in a city institute where property’s a premium. there’s no space for us. the buildings are what they are. if anything’s being built it’s not for us
mark: if you see site 4 do you think that’s far. you see the four food truck spots open in front of medical? the other retail over there is supposed to have a food hall opening next summer with 14 food spots in it. whatever they’re doing over there that’s going to siphon off some business from campus. hurt kendall business. we’re going to have to watch and see.
tina: you said about increasing the quality of food. i was wondering about the specific plans and how that’s manageable?
mark: heather’s spent more time as a chef than i did. right now there’s only one chef that’s still here when i got here. that’s kind of by design and that’s part of the weakness. so we have some new chefs coming in. these are hotel. casinos. but it’s taken 3 or 4 years. a chef here struggles. still competes with other houses. there’s a wonderful survey that some of your comrades worked on that isn’t really utilized. and we look at this every morning. every feedback good or bad helps. and we’ve only had 12 responses in these past 14? days since the beginning of the semester. bon appetit leadership never sees those surveys. but even their leadership they don’t know what’s going on. so we need to address that and the data good or bad will help alot. so however you could spread the word to utilize that. i’d rather have pages to go through than i only need a minute because it’s only 1 page. that’s something that drives people to do a better job. the chefs are very excited. our culinary director just left to manage cruise ships out of france. we are pretty lucky getting the culinary director from harvard. so we’re getting a lot of new faces so we need the feedback. at the end of the day it’s about food quality.
heather: that feedback is really important if there’s something going wrong in your houses and we don’t know then it’s really hard to address. there’s a lot of eyes on it. mark and i have worked really hard with the turnover of chefs on campus.
mark: we only have four eyes. we have 24 locations on campus. so that feedback is really a snapshot into every retail operation.
caragay: presidents if you could bump to your residents!
shuli: gonna wrap up right now
alexandria: i am dormcon advisor. director of ec, covering ad of random. gonna introduce you to the new ads. start with charlie.
charlie: hi i am charlie ad of macgregor. of all the new hires. i’ve only been here for about 4 months. so very happy to be here and nice to meet you all.
alexandria: fun fact? q of random
charlie: if you were a tree what tree would you be hmm. sequoia
akimi: hi i’m the new ad at mccormick and i use she/her/hers pronouns and this is my fourth day here. if you’re gonna be at mccormick there is going to be an ice cream social tonight. if i was a tree. an evergreen and a sycamore. because they were in
kevin: hi i’m kevin the new ad of bc i use he/him pronouns. coming from duke university. if i was a tree i would be a pine tree because man there are a lot of pine trees.
alexandria: another new ad of baker but unable to come because the gra hiring but hopefully be here at another gbm. (what tree would you be?) aspen because objectively the best tree
caragay: start with updates. dorm presidents first.
zangi: my name is zangi. i use he series and they series. i am ec vp. we got a new rac yesterday so there’s now two of us. we passed our budget. we’re having problems with laundry machines. 5/10 are broken. filed a request supposedly getting fixed. working on getting clothing optionality protocol approved. we got our protocol approved by admin. but we are working on getting a new section of it approved. new section about implementing new clothing optional halls. we think maybe if we could get it implemented it could be implemented across campus. (random: we do have a protocol for this)
tina: hi i’m prez of new vassar. i use she/her. the only thing to bring up to dormcon. none of our sinks have a food grinder thing in them. but it’s a thing that facility decided on a few years ago that none of the new dorms are going to have them because of issues. but there is a lot of food in them and i feel like we should have one
caragay: do you need to bring this up to someone or something?
tina: yes probably facilities thing but haven’t talked to anyone yet.
shuli: burton conner, do you know if you’re going to have food grinders?
christina: new house has them.
jordan: simmons does not have them.
shuli: any issues?
margaret: hi i’m margaret one of mccormick’s co presidents. we are making a new house position called innovation committee/chair because many people are bringing up new ideas for the dorm to become better. already three freshmen telling us they want to do it!
someone: did you see a plan to put sanitary items in the bathrooms?
margaret: yes the ground floor have them but we think since mccormick is an all female dorm it would be nice to have them
alan: hi i’m alan next prez and we’ve been talking to keith about getting guest list up. we recently had a fitness pole in a wing that was taken down by our house manager.
meghana: this issue was brought up to judy. asked wing why they need to have this.
alan: this may end up in our fitness room but people wanted it in the main lounge.
meghana: they wanted goal of putting pole in lounge,
alan: last thing is passing our budget.
shayla: hi i’m shayla maseeh vp. emma can’t be here. we have our new floor reps for each floor so they can start buying things. planning maseeh boat cruise maseeh cup and 10th year anniversary celebration. hopefully getting new iron probably chain it to the wall so it doesn’t go missing.
christina: hi i’m christina i use she/her pronouns. i’m new house president. made gc for exec of new house and presidents of individual houses. so meeting soon. desmond and la casa leadership are doing gra search. last thing. some people are wondering what the hosting situation will be like for cpw about getting sleeping bags or air mattresses. is there a historically a method for dealing with that?
shuli: it’s never been the case in the past where dorms purchase those things. sometimes there have been organized swaps.
mohan: jordan left so i’m gonna say no update for simmons
bookbinder: we passed our new budget. we realized that a lot of knowledge about how floors can request budgets went missing. our new ad has been hired. jacob oppenheimer will start mid march? (alexandria: on friday!) we also have had a sustainability chair but the position was not formal at all. so we are formalizing this. getting connected with ua sustain. getting money from ua three years ago. last november we had an in dorm pilot program for menstrual products as well so we are going to continue and expand. we will amend constitution to make amending constitution easier. right now you have to stick things in people’s mailboxes. oh we didn’t introduce ourselves. i’m bookbinder one of the two co presidents of random
sarah: hi i’m sarah the president of bc. i use she/her pronouns. going on for three years now. two saturdays ago we had our flex event. big bc publicity kickoff thing. pretty good attendance at that. there’s a lot of interest. a couple floors had events throughout the week. based on social media there seemed to be pretty good attendance at those. we have stuff coming for our lounge. now that we have a lounge chair. they pretty much gave us whatever we wanted. seemed to have no limit on the funding? because we were buying some expensive things. so ec keep that in mind. the only thing is getting tap access which is through is&t. we have a lot of funds from the pandemic and stuff for group spending that we have left.
shuli: do all the dorms have reserve funds? (insert yeses) (insert discussion on how this is used)
shuli: mohan our treasurer could you get stuff written up about the reserve account and how it works? because some presidents seem to not really know
sarah: pre covid we were talking about getting donations from alumni for renovations and stuff. fundraising and how to tap into alumni as a dorm. playing around with idea of using mit 24 hour thing but for dorms. wondering if other dorms have set dorm fundraising
zangi: we have some alumni management. updating the mailing lists. some events historically involve alumni and
ashley: i am no longer macgregor standing president. prez’s name is logan. someone went to bob the ad about getting a mural but bob was like no that’s old.
shuli: finally meeting with suzy tomorrow. some different student groups on campus including native american students and bsu there is some interest in getting interest groups in residence halls but we don’t really know what this means so we will have a working group up
mohan: julian has an update.
julian: i’m the facilities chair of simmons. basically there are a lot of facilities in simmons that need repair or replacement. but it’s generally more than we can source in a semester. but from what i know dormcon is sitting on a bit of a surplus. so wondering if dormcon can provide dorms across the board with some facilities costs.
caragay: so some facilities should not be student funds. some should be ads.
shuli: raise of hands if you have some
ashley: is this something we could get mind hand heart funds for? because this is wellness.
shuli:
zangi: we had another renovations workshop yesterday. the architects are generally listening to us. they seem to be somewhat taking our input on stuff. they somewhat listened to the stuff we said at the first workshop. but if you are continuously bugging your architects they will actually listen to you.
someone: architects have an idea of what they want to hear from you. push the boundaries of the guided path
zawad: housing is putting a good amount of effort to make these workshops happen. so that’s something you can keep in mind.
AGENDA
- mark hayes
- Introduce new ADs