The men of Zeta Beta Tau take the term “table hopping” literally. Dinner time in the periwinkle-walled dining room involves a lot of getting up and jumping around before settling down for chicken and potatoes.
But a new policy may soon change the jovial mealtime atmosphere, fraternity members said.
Starting next fall, all fraternity members who live in university residences will be required to purchase a meal plan, said William Banis, vice president for student affairs. They have the option to purchase a special meal plan with fewer meals and more points. Typically upon pledging a fraternity, new members change their residence hall meal plans to include eating some or all of their meals at the fraternity houses.
The plan costs $2,810 for the entire year and includes six meals a week and 750 points for the year.
“(Banis) looks at students and sees dollar signs, he looks at fraternities and sees red dollar signs with minuses in front of him,” said Medill junior and ZBT member Jabril Faraj.
There were several reasons behind this decision, Banis said, including that the school incurred a financial loss by students being exempt from meal plans. Banis said he also wanted to ensure the quality of nutrition for students who live in the university residence halls. He said that not every fraternity provides enough food – or food of a high enough level of nutrition – to the degree which parents expect.
“Some fraternities do meals very well,” Banis said. “Others just muddle through. Some leave more to be desired.”
The idea for this new meal plan emerged two years ago, when Banis hired a consultant to work with students to develop a compromise. Banis said the consultant reported that Northwestern was the only school he could find that completely exempted students who live in university housing from purchasing some form of meal plan.
“Everyone has their own vested interest in this,” Banis said. “We’ve taken out time in addressing this, and we’re pretty clear on what we want to do.”
Lucas Artaiz, IFC president and ZBT member, said the new policy came as a surprise. Three hours prior to a regularly scheduled meeting with other Greek leaders on March 3, the SESP junior received an e-mail notifying him that Banis and several members of his staff would be attending. The administrators presented the new policy at the meeting, Artaiz said.
“They fielded our comments and our concerns, but there wasn’t a whole lot of give on their part,” Artaiz said. At the meeting, Banis said the dropped meal plans cost the university between $500,000 and $1,000,000.
“IFC understands the economy,” Artaiz said. “We’re frustrated, obviously, because we have to operate in the same climate the university does.”
Artaiz said the new policy has the potential to eliminate $180,000 from ZBT’s $480,000 annual budget.
“ZBT can only house 24,” Artaiz said. “We can’t even hold an entire class, while some fraternities can hold two (classes).”
For this reason, ZBT is more dependent on its meal plan as a contribution to its budget than other fraternities. The sudden announcement of the new policy means ZBT will have to scramble to adjust its plans.
“We feel that this was just sprung on us,” Artaiz said. “We did not have adequate notice.”
Taylor Sweet, a Weinberg freshman in Phi Kappa Psi, said the new plan could stand to benefit students like him, who live far away from the fraternity where they are expected to eat most of their meals.
“I have eight meals at 1835 Hinman and eight meals at the frat,” Sweet said. “I have a lot of classes at Tech, so I eat lunch at the frat. I had to sign up for next quarter’s meal plan before I knew my classes. That’s tough for someone like me, because its a 15- or 20-minute walk.”
Artaiz said the exemption of fraternity members from meal plans originated around 1989, as a compromise for the implementation of the “freshman freeze” and deferred rush.
“(Exemption) was part of a bigger compromise,” Artaiz said. “It’s being taken away without discussion.”
Artaiz said his primary concern as IFC president was that brothers would no longer enjoy a communal dining experience.
“That’s a way that we connect to each other,” Artaiz said. “Freshmen and sophomores, in my mind, need that experience of brotherhood.”
