Following the publication of my article “Fall Term Brings Changes in Dining Hall” in The Bennington Lens on October 5, 2025, I received an email from the General Manager of Dining Services, Brian Flagg. In this email, Mr. Flagg expressed his disappointment with the coverage of the dining hall changes. He offered to meet with me in order to clarify his concerns, so myself and my editor, Olivia Morrison, sat down with Mr. Flagg on October 16th. We met at the front of the dining hall and had a productive conversation. At its conclusion, it was clear that the disappointment stemmed largely from a lack of clear detail in the article regarding each change. Mr. Flagg gave us permission to publish our conversation in order to fully illuminate his perspective.
Brian Flagg: I didn’t mean for my email to sound bad, but last year—I’ve been here almost two years. Right after I came on board—the person formally in my position was here for a long time, I don’t know how long you’ve been here.
Holland Elisabeth: Chef Steve.
BF: It was a big thing. And they [The Lens] were not very kind to us last year. So it was a bit rough for a few weeks there. My initial reaction was ‘oh no, here we go again,’ but [this article was] not as bad as I thought! Not compared to last year. Just some of the things I sent to Lorraine were not forwarded properly.
HE: Yes.
BF: Typically, the way it works with Aramark is that I have to send pre-approved stuff through corporate so it can be approved by them. By the time it circled back to Lorraine, I think it was too late.
HE: Yeah. I have the article, if you’d like—
BF: Yeah! I think there are some clarification points that would really help people understand better.
Mr. Flagg proceeds to scroll through the initial article.
BF: So, the changes to the meal plan, etcetera. Here’s a couple of reasons for the removal of the Flex-7 plan. It didn’t offer students the access we feel they should get. If you’re a student here, we want you to be able to access anything all the time, not just because of where you live. Just because you’re off campus doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have access to the full array of dining, meaning you can come in here literally any time you want.
Flagg is referencing the initial reasoning for the creation of the Flex-7 plan—for students who lived in the Paran Creek apartments or otherwise off-campus.
BF: It’s your home, right? You should be able to come in gere, hang out, have access to whatever you want. So, we put together three all-access meal plans—when I say three, it’s really one. It’s called the All Access Plan, but what it does is offer declining balance options of $0, $50 or $250. What those declining balances are to be used for is so at any time you want to, as a student, you have some money on your card. If dining hall is closed, you can go to Roz’s or something, swipe your card, and it comes off as money. Not your meal plan.
Also, the intention of these [vending machines]—these are called Byte Machines—the reasoning behind those was to give 24-hour access to every student. In those machines aren’t just snacks. They’re full meal solutions. Our intent was to put one in the Student Center, in VAPA, and the Barn. So, that’s what we did. Unfortunately—and I really don’t mind that you print this—unfortunately, we had to take the one out of the Student Center, and haven’t loaded the one in VAPA because of a very high rate of theft.
HE: Yeah, I wrote that.
BF: Yeah. So, the reason one is in dining hall [is because] it is the one that was in Student Center. So we moved it up here to at least give students until 9:00 p.m., right? We’re trying to figure out how we can combat this theft thing and put these things back into action, because it’s really here for the kids, but I mean, in two days I had $500 worth of product taken. And it’s very creative, the way they did it, and we’re trying to figure that solution out, but we put it in here, for now. There is also one in the Barn, which we—Campus Safety has agreed to let students in, at night, no matter what time it is, so they can still access it until I can figure out what to do. I think the plan is to take the one in VAPA and actually put it in the Campus Safety Booth. Kinda hard to steal in front of Campus Safety. I just don’t want to take them away, but if it continues, I have to, because I can’t go broke.
Olivia Morrison: Has there been any theft, that you know of, at this one [the machine in the dining hall]?
BF: Nope.
OM: That’s good!
HE: That’s good!
BF: There was at [the vending machine in] the Barn.
OM: That one’s still in there?
BF: It is still in there, for now. We’ve put a camera up. Really, my goal is giving them [students] access to everything they need any time of day.
So the Green Box Program: a couple things behind that. I’ve been working very closely with—I don’t know the actual name of the department, but we’ll call it Campus Health and Wellness—and talking to them about the group of neurodivergent students that we have on campus, and we have a lot of them. And their divergences are anything from, they can’t eat in the dining hall because it’s too light, or too loud, or too crowded, right? And so there was a segment of the student population that was paying for the meal plan, but not really using it. Which also bothers me, right? I want any kid to come in here and get anything they want. So, the Green Box helps in that regard because they can literally come in when it’s not crazy and crowded, and take their food to eat in a space where they feel comfortable, safe, and secure, right? That’s one of the reasons we went to it.
Reason number two is, we were losing so many plates! At the end of the term, at the end of last year, we would go into houses, and we collected 124 plates in the houses. Right? That’s tough. So it [the Green Box Program] helps combat that.
But the other piece, as well, is folks were coming in with gym bags and tupperware, and literally emptying all of the salad bar. Filling it with fruit and leaving. And while I understand the desire and need to do that, that’s a lot, and it cost me a lot of money. So, now, they can absolutely take their stuff, I’m just controlling it a little better. And how it works, is you come in, hand me five bucks, I hand you a green container. You come back, don’t even have to wash it, give it back. If you want another one then, they give you a box, if they don’t they give you this little key tag and then next time you want a box, you turn it in.
At the end of term—all that money is in a safe downstairs—at the end of term, you walk in, hand me a box or a tag, and I give you back your five bucks. Pretty simple. There really isn’t a need for a list; I took my cue from other schools that use this program. If there are five hundred out there, there’s $2500 in the safe, everyone gets five bucks back. There was a little confusion at first—people thought they had to buy the box. Since the initial grumbly period, it’s worked out pretty well. Faculty and staff, as well, love it. It’s a much more efficient way to control costs and help out the kids that need space. We don’t lose plates, don’t have to collect 130 of ‘em at the end of term, right?
That’s kind of the things I wanted to address—oh, with tariffs, the biodegradable plates and forks are through the roof. And students, they do what they do, were taking stacks of them—I’m sure you’ve seen ‘em—and we were taking a big hit. So, that’s another reason for the boxes, too, right?
I just wanted to make it clear that all of this is driven by feedback, not just from students, but by faculty and staff, by what they need and want. Hence the new student kitchen, I think it’s amazing. You can go in until 9 o’clock and cook with a rotating menu. All of this was done to really enhance the options for students. We’re small enough [that] we can change as fast as we need to.
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