We Need a Meal Plan!

Living in a city as culturally and gastronomically diverse as Paris, it can be a very exciting thing to choose where and what to eat. That is, until it’s 7 PM, you have an assignment due in the morning, your fridge is filled with the remnants of last Sunday’s produce and you’ve decided that you don’t want pasta with butter for the third time this week. 

At most universities, the easy fix would be to head to the school cafeteria and pick up a quick and easy, ready-to-eat dinner and not worry about how you’re going to feed yourself that night. However, considering the fact that AUP students are spread out throughout the city and that there isn’t a cafeteria to visit, the prospect of finding and eating food can be much more difficult to navigate.

@jenyyng eat dinner with me at boston university! 🍟🥕🥐🌽🍓🫐 she was tewwww good thank you so much to bianca and angelina for showing me around! check out spoon_boston on ig! 🌟😊 #college #dininghall #bostonuniversity #boston #mukbang ♬ Cooking, bossa nova, adults, light(950693) - Kids Sound

The "broke college student” isn’t an aesthetic

In the age of rising costs, economic uncertainty and when the cost of living has skyrocketed since the 70’s, it has become increasingly more difficult to financially provide for ourselves as young adults. Most universities try to help with the overall cost of living and include a meal plan or some sort of food assistance that’s included in tuition. While AUP students have access to our wonderful Amex café, the Amex is independent from AUP, and there aren’t any set ways to help students out with meals/food. 

The "broke college student" aesthetic came from a series of social, cultural and economic factors. For decades, many university students have struggled with low to no income, rising tuition, high rent, etc. and have had to sacrifice certain luxuries because of this. This then became a media and pop-culture phenomenon when shows such as Gilmore Girls and Friends showcased this "aesthetic" (ramen noodles, living in tiny dorms, multiple part-time jobs) that then became synonymous with the "broke college student."

"Although the Parisian food scene is amazing, it’s not realistic.”

Living in Paris has made me appreciate good food more than ever, but it’s also made me realize how complicated and expensive eating can be as a student here. Most importantly, I wanted to further understand the student perspective on this, as far as I know, the questions behind the lack of an AUP meal plan have been an ongoing topic of conversation over many years. Two juniors at AUP, Sierra Bulk and Lydia Keyes were asked what their perspectives were on this topic. 

When bringing up the question of why they feel AUP needs a meal plan, Bulk said, “I believe AUP would benefit from a meal plan because I think that groceries and meals are difficult to access, especially pricewise here.” She continued by saying, “I find that although the Parisian food scene is amazing, it’s not realistic to think that the average student can afford that lifestyle.” Keyes also brought up the topic of price and budget, saying, “AUP needs a meal plan because we pay way too much in tuition for us to not have some kind of benefits when it comes to food and meals.” She also mentioned that the process of navigating foreign supermarkets as students abroad can sometimes make the process of cooking a meal more difficult." 

"Most of us are in a foreign country, which means many of us are unfamiliar with the grocery stores, meaning being able to make food for ourselves is much harder than for most students in the US.” Both Bulk and Keyes seemed to find frustration in the fact that there aren’t accessible food/meal options included within our schooling, especially as college students abroad who have trouble affording and navigating the Parisian food scene.

The issue of AUP’s meal plan, or rather lack thereof, has been a long-time discussed topic

So why hasn’t there been any change? With all the new additions to our campus this year, it surprises me that there still hasn’t been any effective action taken to combat this issue. Couldn’t the same money spent on renovating the Amex have been used to provide more on-campus dining options for students? I reached out to Marc Montheard, AUP’s Vice President of Student Services, as I wanted to hear firsthand from the administration why there has been so much pushback on such a relevant issue, but I was unable to get any comments from him. 

In the end, the conversation around an AUP meal plan keeps circling back to the same thing: eating should always be convenient and should never feel like an added puzzle we have to solve on top of classes, rent and everything else. Paris is incredible, and so is AUP, but if other universities can offer some kind of structure that helps students stay fed, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for us to want the same. Whether this gets sorted out in five years or in ten, the need isn’t going anywhere.