Pomona College Dining Services rolled out new changes and restrictions to the Pomona Dining Plan, which is required for all students living on campus, at the beginning of the fall semester. In a resolution passed on Sept. 24, the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) condemned Dining Services’ lack of discussion with students prior to implementing the new plan and called for Pomona to renew their commitment to shared governance.
The plan initially reduced Pomona students’ weekly cross-campus meal swipes, which can be used to eat at other 5Cs’ dining halls, from 19 to 10 meal swipes. In an email to the Pomona student body on Sept. 14, Robert Robinson, assistant vice president of facilities and campus services, announced that students will now have 14 cross-campus meal swipes.
Other changes to the plan, which is now referred to as “continuous” rather than “universal” on the Pomona website, includes increased flexibility at the Coop Fountain, meal equivalency of up to $7.00 at Cafe 47 and a 30-minute pause between all meal swipes.
According to new signage in Frank and Frary, the dining halls are also limiting to-go protein servings and prohibiting self-serve protein. This change has not been communicated as part of the new meal plan. Robinson said in an interview with TSL that the protein allowance restriction had been in place previously.
When asked about the motivation behind the cross-campus meal restriction, Robinson described a need to divert resources towards Pomona’s dining halls.
“We’re trying to keep the resources we have within our program so we can serve our students better,” he said.
Robinson noted that for each off-campus meal swipe a student uses, Pomona must pay that school the value of the meal. Students use an average of three off-campus meal swipes per week, according to data provided by Robinson.
Sinan Walji PO ’28, a member of Claremont Student Worker Alliance (CSWA), said that Pomona’s payout to other dining halls has been used as a tactic in past CSWA campaigns.
“I believe that [Pomona] knows that since the contract is renewing, realistically more pickets are coming if negotiations don’t go the right way,” Walji said, referencing Pomona dining workers’ union contract, which recently entered renewal negotiations.
“And because of that, they want to incentivize students to feel like they have to go to their school’s dining hall more,” he continued. “Because it costs them I think over $20 every time someone swipes into another dining hall.”
The changes were informed by Dining Services’ ongoing consultation with Webb Foodservice Design Group, a consulting group that Pomona hired in January 2026 to implement wider changes within Dining Services across the next two years.
“You have to look at the entire program. We’ve gone through a series of changes or issues over the last three or four years,” Robinson said. “We brought in a group [Webb Foodservice Design Group] to redefine what the dining hall plan should look like.”
Goals for this year outlined by the group also include reorganizing Dining Services management, Coop Fountain and Cafe 47 “retail concept clarification,” and redesigning Dining Services’ financial reporting and expense management, according to Robinson.
TSL requested that Robinson provide the full 125-page report compiled by Webb Foodservice Design Group, and had not received it by press time.
Robinson first proposed the meal plan changes during a meeting with the Student Facilities Advisory Committee (SFAC) over the summer.
Established in spring 2026 as part of Pomona’s Shared Governance Initiative, the SFAC is led by Robinson and composed of five students, including ASPC Commissioner of Facilities and the Environment Isha Raheja.
During the first meeting, students in the committee were “pretty opposed to the changes in general,” according to SFAC member Adrián Blanco PO ’27.
On July 28, Robinson emailed the SFAC a meal plan proposal draft, which included a 45-minute break between swipes. Blanco and Raheja responded to the email expressing qualms about the changes, especially the 45-minute break and cross-campus swipe restrictions.
In response, Robinson lowered the break period to 30 minutes. Besides this edit, Raheja and Blanco noted that their feedback was not implemented in the drafted plan.
Neither ASPC or the SFAC received communication about the proposed meal plan changes after this email exchange, student members learned about the changes after it had already been implemented at the beginning of the semester.
Upon returning to campus, Raheja found out about the changes from another student. In an interview with TSL, she described a lack of communication from Robinson.
“I didn’t even know it was happening because I had only ever heard it referred to as a proposed plan and never got confirmation from Bob,” Raheja said.
A few days later, on Aug. 30, ASPC emailed the study body informing them of the changes, the first communication that all students received.
The next day, in an email titled “Understanding Your Pomona Dining Plan,” Robinson announced “updates and enhancements” to the plan “designed to provide greater flexibility, convenience, and access to dining throughout the day.”
The email linked to a page on Pomona’s website outlining the plan, but did not directly state what changes had been made.
In an SFAC meeting on Sept. 23, Blanco expressed concern over ambiguity in the email.
“I think that in your communications with the student body, it would be helpful if the facts were put first,” he said to Robinson. “I think it’s just best to be transparent with students.”
Blanco is one of several students with dietary restrictions who have expressed concern over the meal plan changes, noting how dining halls at the other 5Cs often have more allergy-friendly options than Frank and Frary, in addition to the general greater flexibility that cross-campus dining provides.
“Frary and Frank in general make me kind of sick, sometimes they don’t have any protein or only one protein that I can eat,” he said. “The past few years they’ve also had an issue with labeling things, sometimes what’s on the menu on Pomona’s website isn’t that same as what’s being served.”
Blanco, who is intolerant to gluten and dairy, said that while Frank and Frary have allergen-friendly meal stations, Malott Dining Hall’s “Oasis” station at Scripps has more thorough allergy-friendly options, and that it and Pitzer’s McConnell Dining Hall consistently use measures like gluten-free soy sauce.
“I have to really be vigilant about where I’m going,” he said. “I have to read the menus and stuff first to make sure that they have a protein, a carb and hopefully something else that I can eat.,” he said.
He usually comes close to or maxes out his weekly cross-campus meal swipes utilizing these options.
On Sept. 3, Raheja opened up a form where students could provide feedback on the meal plan changes. In the two weeks that the form was open, it had garnered 134 responses. 90.2% of respondents responded “No” to “Are you happy with the changes made to the Pomona Dining Plan,” and 46.6% of total respondents identified themselves as having dietary restrictions.
Raheja met with Robinson on Sept. 11 to present the form’s results; also present were two students with dietary restrictions who shared their perspective on how the cross-campus restrictions had impacted their dining habits.
Following the meeting, Robinson announced in a Sept. 14 email to the Pomona student body that he was increasing the number of cross-campus meal swipes to 14 due to student feedback.
The email did not clarify that 19 meals, not 14, had been the original swipe allowance. During the SFAC meeting, Robinson confirmed that the original cross-campus meal allowance was 19.
In Raheja’s report, she notes that 30% of respondents cited “concerns over the lack of student input and shared governance, particularly given the change was made during the summer after students had already signed their tuition agreement forms.”
“I do feel like it’s been ‘shared input,’ I don’t feel like it’s been shared governance.”
On Thursday, Sep. 17, ASPC introduced a resolution titled “A Resolution Opposing Pomona College Dining Services Unilateral Decision-Making” calling for Dining Services to “actively engage in shared governance by proactively creating opportunities for all students to discuss Dining Services proposals before decisions are made.”
Shared governance concerns outlined in the resolution are not limited to the meal plan changes, notably including Dining Services’ recent sudden closure and expected re-opening of the student-run boba shop Milk & Honey.
Walji condemned the lack of communication around Dining Services’ recent decisions.
“Dining Services is just like ‘We made a decision, deal with it.’ That’s kind of been the pattern of events this year when it comes to communication,’” he said. “I feel like when it comes to decisions as large as these, we are paying tuition to go to the school to receive certain services, and our tuition is not changing but the access we get to campus resources is.”
In an interview with TSL, Robinson questioned the meaning of “shared governance,” instead suggesting the term “shared input.”
“I view shared governance to be in some cases shared input, a commitment to understanding what others need,” he said.
In the agenda for the SFAC’s Sept. 23 meeting, each agenda item was listed as either “inform,” “consult,” or “collaborate,” a change that SFAC members noted had not existed in previous meeting agendas.
A key at the bottom of the agenda stated that for “inform” items, “we [Dining Services] will keep you informed;” for “consult,” “We will keep you informed, listen to and acknowledge concerns and aspirations, and provide feedback on how public input influenced the decision;” for “collaborate,” “We will look to you for advice and innovation in formulating solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions to the maximum extent possible.”
Raheja said that her experiences as Commissioner with Dining Services and Robinson this semester have aligned more with ‘input’ than collaboration.
“I feel like I’m always waiting for the next thing to react to,” Raheja said. “I do feel like it’s been ‘shared input,’ I don’t feel like it’s been shared governance.”