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> The gaming doesn’t stop at disability. Stanford requires undergrads to purchase an $7,944 annual meal plan—unless they claim a religious dietary restriction t
by CodingJeebus 8mo ago
> The gaming doesn’t stop at disability. Stanford requires undergrads to purchase an $7,944 annual meal plan—unless they claim a religious dietary restriction the cafeteria can’t accommodate.
Isn’t the mandatory meal plan also a game by the university? A really frustrating trend I’ve seen more companies do nowadays is to tack on mandatory charges for crap that I don’t need or want, and it’s happening everywhere.
If declaring a disability is what it takes to get out of a compulsory meal charge, then it’s worth examining why the school feels compelled to make the meal plan mandatory in the first place.
It’s not just students or consumers playing a game, companies (or universities in this case) are playing one too, and it’s called: how to get as much money out of our customers as possible.
- lux-lux-lux 8mo agoThat’s because it’s smart business when you abuse your captive customer base, totally different thing. When pesky customers do the same back to you, well, time to complain about the ‘third worldification of American institutions,’ or something.
- ameliaquining 8mo agoIn Tan's partial defense, I don't think he would be complaining about "third worldification of American institutions" just over evasion of meal-plan rent-seeking. The original, much higher-profile story was about the failure modes of using the disability accommodations process to allocate broadly desirable things that are rivalrous or positional (as opposed to narrowly-scoped accommodations), and then Tan tacked on a tangent about the meal-plan thing because it has surface similarities and also doesn't make the students look great, without considering whether it's really an instance of the same core issue.
- CodingJeebus 8mo agoPeople are going to act to further their economic position. Water is wet. There's an entire misalignment of economic incentives in that world that he just completely glosses over in favor of "third-worldification".
- direwolf20 8mo agoOh like people who claim they need all the GPU and RAM supply to save the world
- UncleMeat 8mo agoRemember that Garry Tan believes in a largely illiberal society where our institutions are organized around CEOs rather than democratic control. Of course the people exist to be turned into goo to be extracted as dollar bills.
- FireBeyond 8mo agoYeah, my step-daughter is a vegetarian. She cannot opt out of the several thousand dollar a year meal plan at her college despite the campus dining facilities having often only one not-particularly-good vegetarian option (I'm not vegetarian but when visiting I've tried the options). So we're left with paying her credit card to buy groceries and a largely unused meal plan. > it’s worth examining why the school feels compelled to make the meal plan mandatory in the first place. Well, that's often because Aramark and Chartwells (Compass) require that in their contracts. My partner is the Accounting Manager for another university in our state and that's mandated in their contract (along with other clauses like "any event on campus must be offered to us for catering first, and we will either cater it or decline, and only then can you use another caterer"). There can be debates on why that is allowed in the negotiation, though.
- Beijinger 8mo agoI had to pay for the meal plan during a summer stay. Quite a while ago, but yes. 1. There are cheaper options 2. There are healthier options 3. No offense, but American food is often low quality. Man. If I think of Fudan University food, then I want to cry. So good.