As a follow up to last week’s article, “Too Many Swipes, Not Enough Dollars?,” Spectrum would like to provide more insight into why the meal plans were changed. For the past two years, the university has been exploring different meal plan options in order to combat food insecurity.
Source: Alexis Barada, Staff Writer and Photographer
“We started looking at unlimited plans about a year and a half ago. I had the opportunity to talk to other colleagues that had made a similar transition. We never asked a student, ‘do you want an unlimited meal plan?,’ but we had concerns, for years, about food insecurity on our campus with the former meal plan,” said Dean of Students Denise Tiberio.
Administrators also hope that the change in meal plans will benefit students on a social level. In previous years, a student might have eaten alone because their roommate or friend already ate and did not want to use another meal swipe. With the new plan, students can reenter dining halls every 45 minutes.
An additional change was a focus on limiting what students had to spend on coffee and acai bowls. For some students, most of their dining dollars went towards those items, which saw students run out of dining dollars with a month remaining in the semester.
“The meal exchanges were game changers. I believe that people look at meal exchanges in comparison to last year. They were not offered everywhere last year but now they are, and there were time constraints and now there is no time limit. We also increased what was offered as a meal exchange,” said Tiberio. “Sushi was the one area where Chartwells could not financially offer it as an exchange, but that does not mean there will not be specials on sushi or poke bowls.”
“This is a work-in-progress. We are trying our best to make sure we are supplying the best resources and support that we can for every student on this campus. I know that it is probably not possible to make everyone happy, but Chartwells is doing a phenomenal job of listening to feedback and trying to make those changes,” said Tiberio.
