As we approach the 100th anniversary of the gift establishing residential colleges in Yale, the administration has deprived Yale College students of an important part of their residential college experience — the defining feature of Yale College — in the final months of term, a time when stability and community are needed most. Yale cut meal plans — for which the students have already paid. The administration’s plan allows students to go to other dining halls around campus where they can seek out their food service of choice, just like a shopping mall. But the communities are fragmented and students no longer dine with their roommates and friends. And why should Yale care? After all, Yale already has the students’ money. It appears that the students had no voice in this decision made by a Yale administration largely made up of managers who don’t know that they have eliminated an important part of the Yale experience.

Imagine paying almost $90,000 to a business that has $40 billion in reserves and a cadre of  130,000 loyal alumni who donate hundreds of millions of dollars each year — and that business decides to unilaterally change — and breach — the contract with sanctimonious statements such as “reducing waste” or “the students’ eating patterns” have changed, a.k.a., blaming the victim.  

As an associate fellow of Timothy Dwight College, I have seen firsthand the decline of the residential college system under the guise of efficiency or expediency for decades. As a community associate of Rice University’s Martel College, I see firsthand the way Yale’s residential colleges used to be — vibrant communities with students engaged in discussions with each other and faculty; standing on tables to make announcements around a common lunchtime and dinnertime; and not being locked out of the central hall of the community in off hours. 

But this latest dining hall policy change is illustrative of ongoing decline in the residential college experience and the social fabric that ties Yalies together. 

Bart Giamatti ’60 GRD ’64 was the last Yale president who appreciated and respected the residential college system. His love for Yale was plain as he co-edited Master Pieces from the Files of T.G.B., a collection of essays and letters of Timothy Dwight College Master Thomas Goddard Bergin ’25 GRD ’29. As Yale president, Giamatti was acutely aware of the need to better market the product of Yale. He co-taught “Marketing the University” at the School of Management. He pushed to upgrade the dining halls to improve offerings. Before Giamatti, it was Kingman Brewster ’41 who made sure that the residential colleges became the center of campus life with the advent of admitting women to Yale College. 

Why is it that 59 percent of juniors live off campus? Absent the community that is formed and cherished in the residential colleges, there is absolutely no value proposition for students to live in the colleges. In the late 1970s, the Yale Daily News reported that Connecticut’s state prisoners were allocated more living space than Yale undergraduates in their rooms. If the dining hall is no longer the center of life for students, then there are much better options off campus.    

Last week I had lunch in one dining hall alongside students and faculty from an academic department that has never, ever made a “profit” for Yale. The faculty and students present complained about the death of the dining hall. More than a dozen dining hall workers were present but severely underemployed — no cost savings there. The one “hot” offering was a desiccated chicken breast with the consistency of a hockey puck that was apologetically plopped out from a steel tub as the “protein” for one’s lunch. Is this value for one’s money?

Pity the bean counting bureaucrat in Yale’s back office who used AI to optimize the distribution of centrally prepared scones and prefabricated sandwiches. That bureaucrat has no idea that a Yale professor won a Nobel prize for applying optimization techniques and, more importantly, elucidating their limitations.  

The students of Yale College have been cheated. Yale has foisted upon them a complete bait-and-switch even while complaining about the cuts that have been foisted upon Yale by Trump, Musk and DOGE.  

To maintain the integrity of Yale, the dining halls must be restored; the students must be compensated; and the bean counters must learn what is important. Intellectual honesty and leadership are now required. 

ED HIRS graduated from Yale College in 1979 and from the School of Management in 1981. He received the Yale Medal in 2023. He can be reached at edhirs@aya.yale.edu.