An Independent Dining Service Is the Only Way Forward

Alex Gervais ’28

Executive Opinion & Design Editor

“If we don’t get it, shut it down!” On Monday, Oct. 27, Chartwells workers at Mather Dining Hall began protesting a reduction in hours by management. These workers are bravely and valiantly standing up for themselves and their right to collectively bargain, a cause that will benefit every student who uses Trinity’s dining services. They are truly the backbone of our school; they feed us everyday and are incredibly valuable members of the Trinity community. Their willingness to speak out and put their jobs on the line to protect each other exposes the underlying issue with dining here at Trinity: Chartwells. 

Chartwells Higher Ed is the company who manages our dining system and runs dining services at 350 campuses around the country. Their mission statement is plastered on the front page of their website: “creating joy through food.” They are owned by the Compass Group, a publicly traded international conglomerate that is “the nation’s largest family of foodservice and facilities services companies.” Compass recently signed a contract with the United States Department of War, launching a college-style dining pilot program for our nation’s soldiers. (Ironically, many of our students would already describe Chartwells’ food as military grade.) 

We must also compare our school’s food to that of the rest of the NESCAC: Bates has the 7th best food in the nation, Wesleyan is 23rd, Bowdoin is 29th. Trinity’s food was so bad it couldn’t crack the top 500, leaving it unranked and receiving a C grade from Niche. Connecticut College, the only other Chartwells school in the NESCAC, also received a C for their dining. In fact, the food we eat here is the exact same as at Conn. College: on Oct. 24, Mather’s main line served sweet chili pollock fish bites, vegetable fried rice, spicy braised bok choy and edamame for lunch. On Oct. 31 Connecticut College’s main line served the exact same thing. There’s one thing Bates, Wesleyan and Bowdoin all have in common: they have independent dining services. They aren’t tethered to an international company that must appease the shareholder; they only have to appease the students and faculty at their schools. 

For the good of the school, it’s time Trinity follows in the footsteps of its NESCAC peers and establishes a dining system of its own. At Trinity, our students are “bold, independent thinkers,” so it’s time our dining lived up to that too. Trinity should break its contract with Chartwells and build the independent dining system that our campus deserves. Chartwells management has cited lower student enrollment in dining services as a reason for cutting workers hours from 40 to 35 hours per week. The best way to avoid lower dining enrollment is simply to have food students genuinely want to eat. Incentivizing upperclassmen to stay on the full meal plan is not a creative game of Win-it-Wednesday giveaways or a new dessert offering, it’s having a higher baseline quality of food. All of us want a food system we can trust, one that brings the “joy” that Chartwells promises, but our current one never seems to deliver. 

Under an independent dining system, current workers should be invited to retain their active roles and to again form a union. When Southern Connecticut State University severed their relationship with Chartwells, they invited virtually all of their dining employees back aside from a small number of senior managers. Our dining services workers are at the core of everything food related we do here at Trinity, protecting them in a potential transition should be a principal goal of any change we make. 

Yes, this project would absolutely be costly. It would probably involve a complicated financial process of revenue generation, either through loans against the endowment or a major donation push, but I trust our administration to get it done. President Lugo has already proven an adept leader through financial headwinds, leading the Board of Trustees to turn an over $10 million deficit in June into a positive budget by the end of FY25. It would be a powerful statement at the beginning of Lugo’s presidency to strike a distinctly different tone on dining than his predecessors. 

It’s time for a change in Trinity’s dining: we must drop Chartwells and go independent. The students want better food, the workers need better labor protections and our campus community simply deserves better.