RCA meals cannot be used for Frist late meals

The perks of being a Residential College Adviser include a large single, two refrigerators, free board and 190 meals from Dining Services. But not late meals at Frist Campus Center.

This year's RCA meal plan requires RCAs eat 110 meals in their residential college or partner college and 80 meals at other residential colleges. A minimum of seven meals each week must be eaten in the RCA's own college, and they are not allowed to buy food from Frist.

Upperclassmen who are not RCAs are granted two free meals a week to eat anywhere, including Frist. Freshmen and sophomores, as well as juniors and seniors on meal plans, are also permitted to eat at any dining hall.

"Like every other upperclassman, we should also be allowed to use two meals a week wherever we would like, including ... Frist," said Oye Imoisili '08, a Wilson College RCA. "I just think that if we eat in the dining hall often with our advisees already, then two meals a week [in Frist] would not take so much away from that interaction."

Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan said that eating at the dining halls is "part of the job" of being an RCA.

"The 190-meal plan for RCAs is not regarded as a perk but rather as a means by which they can fulfill their responsibilities," she said in an email. "Using these meals in Frist or other dining venues does not serve this purpose."

After complaints from RCAs last year, Deignan's office reexamined RCA meals. "Before this year," Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Hilary Herbold said, "the RCAs received only the 10 meals per week they were required to take in the college, so the current meal plan is considerably more generous."

She added that the original plan for this year was to have RCAs eat all their meals in their college or their paired college, but "after the RCAs made the case for being able to take some of the meals in other colleges, the masters agreed to let them take 80 of the 190 in any residential college."

Imoisili, who started a petition last year protesting the proposed meal plan and requesting more flexibility, said that she is "very grateful that the administration worked with us last year and gave a favorable response to the petition."

Though she disagrees with the decision to exclude RCAs from eating at Frist, Imoisili said that she "wouldn't start another petition about eating at Frist" since the administrators already "[gave] us a more flexible meal plan this year ... demanding even more changes would make us seem ungrateful."

Another RCA expressed support for this year's meal policy. Whitman College RCA Sarah Langberg '09 said that "the goal of giving RCAs a meal plan is to facilitate community bonds and relationships within their residential colleges — such simply cannot be accomplished by swiping for a late meal at Frist."