Best man ever. I had a great talk with him today (for almost 2 hours!), and he had a lot to share about residential dining and other food services at Rice. David McDonald is the Director for Residential Dining, so he deals with everything and anything that is related to residential dining on campus. He even provided the initial down payment for Hoot to start its business!
First, meal plans: yes, this is probably one of the most commonly re-occurring topics around here at Rice, and we just can’t seem to understand exactly what is going on. So this is what I learned: Rice Dining cannot provide the high quality food that we have grown accustomed to at Rice if we offer reduced meal plans. This would be a BIG hit to the budget, and the quality of food would have to decrease dramatically to compensate for this. Well, you might ask, why don’t we just pay for how much meals cost and be done with it? It turns out things are more complicated than that. Read more at the Housing and Dining page….
Meals at Rice = High Quality MEAL SERVICE – I think we should stop thinking of the meal plan as “19 meals a week,” but rather a fee that we pay to get high quality food at our colleges, along with expensive Associates’ Nights, annual picnics, and top quality chefs.
A farm may be coming soon to a grassy plot near you! David McDonald is trying to secure land and funding for a new project to grow a farm near Rice – wow! This would be a unique chance for students to be a part of a sustainable and exciting project, right here at Rice! Who doesn’t want to eat fresh tomatoes?!
For more information about meal plans, nutrition education, composting, and Sammy’s, see the H&D page.
Also, I’m super bummed. Houston was bamboozled today: we DIDN’T get a space shuttle – and we are the home of the shuttle!!! Instead, guess what we got…seats! One pilot seat and one commander seat. Whoop.