Chapotraphouse

just out of curiosity, is/how much of campus dining services are privatized/outsourced to like sodexo or aramark?

i worked on a campus for a decade after being a student there and saw changes to power dynamics as a result of dining service privatization, because suddenly there was a corporate "partner" with its own motivations completely external to the values (re: safety) of the campus community. and that partner wants its cut of the action.

all of it happened behind closed doors of course, because the privatization was deeply unpopular with everyone not on the board of trustees. the trustees themselves needed the corporate partner to leverage for access to credit to upgrade a shitload of buildings on campus, mostly campus housing... so dining services was a sacrifice pawn in the larger game and came with a lot of little sweeteners to smooth over relationships, including creating paid advocates out of adversaries.

but the changeover happened before covid and absolutely played a fucked up role in the premature "back to normalling" of forcing of people back to campus to drive business to all the little non-cafeteria eateries the private services had launched. so it really wasn't about getting food to those on campus during a pandemic, but was really about pulling more bodies back to campus to drive foot traffic to those places.

the neoliberal managerial university is such a fucked up machine.