The Expiration: A story of food service contracts in four parts

The Intro (A shameless attempt at self-promotion)  

It's that time of year again on college campuses.  Students are studying for finals, drinking too much coffee, and, of course, checking Stir It Up obsessively for updates.  Meanwhile, often behind closed doors, university administrators around the country are hammering out agreements with companies that will determine the nature of their university's food service for the year(s) to come.  

The expiration of a contract or the coming up of a renewal option is a unique opportunity for students to gain a powerful role in determining which company comes to campus and how that company is going to act as a campus citizen.  

The examples  (I knew New Jersey and Kansas had something in common)

That's the situation at Drew University, where the current contract with Sodexo has not been renewed, and a dining service committee is considering whether to bring Sodexo back under a revised contract or to bring in a new company.  Gourmet Dining, Chartwells, Parkhurst and Aramark are the four other companies under consideration.   The Committee has set July 1st as their goal for reaching an agreement.  

It was also the situation at Washburn University, where students recently protested over their lack of input in the agreement that was worked out with Chartwells.  Here is what The Topeka Capital-Journal reported:

Phil Norris, a member of the Washburn Student Government Association, stood on a partition between several booths in the Union Market dining area and called on students to make their voices heard to the university's administration.  At issue is a 10-year contract approved March 20 by the Washburn University Board of Regents with Chartwells Food Services.  "We want students to have a voice on campus on issues that are important to them," Norris said. "Right now, they don't feel like they have a voice on campus."

It came out later that the unrest over the contract was partially due to miscommunication.  What was understood by many students to be a ten year contract extension, was really the addition of five one-year renewal options (on top of five existing one-year options from the original contract) which is much less binding.  Though the contract could extend for ten years, the possibility of ending the contract earlier than that by declining to take a renewal option does indeed exist.   This of course, does not undermine the legitimacy of the response of the students, whose relative exclusion from the process remains an issue.

The point (He has to have a point doesn't he?)  

This brings me to my point.  In order to hold food service companies accountable, on issues ranging from social justice to food quality, two things need to happen: contracts need be put out to bid on a more regular basis or there must be some sort of evaluation process and option for enforcing changes; and students need to put themselves in position to influence who gets the contract and under what terms.

If you take a look at our contract database it becomes evident that, the terms of a contract often extend a decade or more.  

• Sodexo's contract at University of Louisville: 2008-2018.  
• Sodexo's contract at Southeastern Oklahoma State:  2006-2016

How is a university community supposed to truly hold their food service company accountable if the contract doesn't expire for ten years????  If students had power to give companies the pink slip every few years or the contract was written to provide enforceable rules and changes in keeping with a set of principles, does anyone doubt that they would get better service and a company more responsible the values of the student body?

In Georgia, contracts with state agencies (including universities) must be renewed on a yearly basis by “positive action” taken by the contracting agency.[1]  Unfortunately Georgia is but one state, so unless you are tight with some very powerful state politicians, it's going to take strong student input into the next contract (which hopefully isn't ten years away) to ensure that the terms are reasonably short.  

The soapbox (Get off of it please)

In order to change the food service industry, students have to have a mechanism to hold the companies that their money supports accountable.  One of the strongest such mechanism is short term contracts.

This does not mean that this is the only opportunity--students are a powerful enough force on college campuses to effect change absent a contract expiration--but a move towards shorter contracts accompanied by student involvement in contract negotiations would be a great step towards gaining a voice in campus food service decisions.