I have previously documented how the US prison system debunks the myth that kosher food is somehow ‘better’ or ‘cheaper’ than non-kosher food as well as how kosher certified food is significantly more expensive than non-kosher food (and not because it is ‘healthier’ either) (1) and the same was recently noted by students at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana in their student newspaper ‘The Tulane Hullabaloo’.
Describing the situation the student body is facing Zack Lukeman explained how:
‘Tulane University’s limited meal plans fail to encourage students to explore New Orleans. Students are forced to choose between the kosher meal plan and variations of the unlimited plan with either 250 or 500 Wavebuck$, a currency that can only be used at on-campus vendors. Students are essentially forced to dine in the cafeteria or at the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life if they want to avoid spending more money than the expensive $4,000 semesterly base meal plan.’ (2)
Put another way students at Tulane University are being forced to choose between several meal plans – one of which is kosher certified while the others are not – but while Lukeman implies that the meal plans being offered are expensive. He isn’t specific enough to tell us about the specifics in terms of meal plan costs are.
However, Jonah Young is much more specific without going into the actual numbers in depth:
‘In previous years, Tulane offered a variety of dining plan options for both first and second-year students. First-year students could choose an unlimited plan, which included unlimited swipes for entry into Malkin Sacks Commons and Green Wave Grille, plus $250 of Wavebuck$. The university offered the TU 15 plan, which offered 15 swipes per week for the dining halls and $400 of Wavebuck$.
Second-year students also had these options, along with two additional plans that offered 10 or seven swipes per week, each paired with a larger amount of Wavebuck$. Students were also offered the Kosher Dining Plan, which is significantly more expensive but provided more options for kosher students. These dining options afforded students flexibility based on their dining preferences.’ (3)
What Young is saying here is that – in essence – Tulane University’s meals plans were expensive but that the most expensive meal plan of them all – by quite some distance apparently – is the kosher meal plan, which really shouldn’t be true given that making food kosher is actually relatively simple unless you want to include meat in the diet.
Since all you have to provide is a vegetarian/vegan diet and you’ve pretty much made the food kosher outside of the more extreme versions of kashruth and why you would want people who inspect salad leaves for any tiny bug in your university is beyond me.
The reason that kosher food plans at Tulane University are so expensive is really quite simple: the kosher food tax. Rabbinical supervision is expensive as is lots of additional equipment and separate cooking arrangements for kosher food and woe betide you if you accidently splash a kosher pot with treif food.
That’ll be $1,000 and a visit to the local mikvah to dip the pot in the mikvah in order to kasher it while the rabbi mumbles prayers and then runs to the bank to deposit your cheque.
The point is that if ‘kosher food was cheap’ or the ‘cost was/is relatively inconsequential/small’ as the ADL likes to claim: then why is the kosher meal plan at Tulane University so expensive compared to the non-kosher meal plans?
Odd: huh?
References
(1) On this please see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/how-us-prisons-disprove-the-kosher
(2) https://tulanehullabaloo.com/71867/views/opinion-tulanes-meal-plan-does-not-go-beyond-the-bubble/
(3) https://tulanehullabaloo.com/70253/views/meal-plan-requirement-is-tulanes-newest-money-grab/
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