Beginning next fall, students at AASU who live on campus will be required to purchase a $600 meal plan. Any student with a current meal plan knows that even a $400 meal plan is very difficult to eat up in a single semester. Taking away the students’ right to choose their meal plan is an ill-disguised means of increasing student fees.
Students who live on campus are required to have a meal plan of $400, $600 or $800 per semester—their choice. They purchase food with their Pirate Cards and can add money to this declining balance whenever they need to.
In order to remain on campus, students must replenish this balance every semester, whether their previous balance is gone or not. While fall semester funds do roll over to spring, any meal plan balance remaining at the end of spring semester will be forfeited without any chance of a refund.
Because of this, all students who live on campus suffer a net loss. Almost no student on a meal plan is able to finish off the entire balance by the end of one semester. Students are purchasing cases of energy drinks and bags of candy just so their money will not be lost.
They buy gratuitous amounts of food that they could never possibly consume themselves and then sell the food to other people who do not have meal plans.
In addition to this “food-scalping,” other strategies students employ to use up their meal plans is to buy other people things to be kind.
These strategies can result in both over-inflated lunch rushes and, on occasion, the total disappearance of an entire item.
Thanks to students who buy bags of food and drinks just to get money off their Pirate Cards, it is not uncommon for the AASU dining services to be completely cleared of its chips, soda, milk or other such items. This, combined with line inflation, often causes students, who truly wish to use the AASU dining services for the intended use of filling their bellies instead of draining their balances, to be disillusioned and turn away from taking advantage of the dining services entirely.
By increasing the cost of the AASU meal plan to a mandatory $600, there will be even more massive clear-outs of food and even longer lines. Numbers of students “scalping” their meals will also likely increase.
The increased cost of meal plans added to housing may not only turn students away from the lunch line, but away from the university as well.
With the potential budget cuts around the bend, how many students can AASU afford to lose? One of AASU’s most attractive features is that it is an economic choice, and what starts with the increased cost of the meal plans could soon turn into a slippery slope.
The fact is that students as a whole don’t want to pay much for a meal plan.
Students were disappointed when the mandatory meal plan was increased from $300 to $400 two years ago, and most students today get by on the $400 plan, currently the cheapest option.
The average meal at the cafeteria, without buying extra to relieve one’s balance, comes to about $5. There are 16 weeks in the spring semester including finals week, and the cafeteria is open every day during this time except for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Since the cafeteria is closed on the weekends, 16 weeks is equivalent to 80 total days of service. On a $400 meal plan, students have to spend at least $5 every day in order to efficiently use their meal plans.
Not all students wish to eat at the cafeteria every day. Regardless of a student’s personal opinions about the quality of the food, eating at the same place every day is simply not desirable. While it is true that a student meal plan can also be used at Quizno’s and Starbucks, it is an inevitability of human diversity that not everyone has the same tastes. Students who do not eat $5 worth of food from the AASU dining services every day will have to either spend even more in the following semester or lose their money.
Under a $600 meal plan, students will have to spend at least $7.50 every day. Those who do not like to see good money go to waste either have to eat more or lose more money.
Trying to avoid the freshman 15? Forget about it. AASU is forcing their students to eat more.
Of course, AASU does not really expect students to eat this much food. Raising the cost of the housing meal plan is just a way for the school to make more money. Instead of increasing the student-housing fee directly, AASU is simply stuffing food into students’ mouths to force more money out of their pockets.
A good education and a place to live are important things that have a direct result of a student paying his or her college tuition. Money that is taken off what a student does not use from his or her meal plan, however, just vanishes into thin air as far as the student is concerned. If the university wishes to increase the cost of student meal plans, it could do so in a manner that would not force the students to take such a loss.
AASU could make arrangements for the meal plans on students’ Pirate Cards to be accepted at more places, such as McDonald’s or Domino’s. Campus residents shop at Kroger all the time. Is it possible to make a deal with Kroger so that Pirate Cards are accepted there?
Under the meal plan contract, students are also unable to transfer any money from their meal plan to any other balance on their Pirate Card. While money can be added to a student’s meal plan any time, none can be removed.
Students should be able to transfer their meal plan money towards “Bookstore Bucks,” “Dining Dollars,” “Pharos Cash” or “Pirate Cash.” If the university wishes for the students to use the dining services, why not let students take back the money that they don’t use on their meal plans at the end of each semester? The remaining money could be used to pay off university violations, buy books, put toward tuition or even toward students’ next semester meal plan if they wish.
While the future Student Union’s Galley may soon yield more feasting options for students, both denying students the freedom to choose the size of their meal plans and forcing them to be obligated to consume unrealistic quantities of cafeteria food is wrong.
Don’t choke!
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