Missed meals mean missed money
Campus Times
October 11, 1996
Cartoon by Kevin Johnstone
Ranting and raving about the quality of Davenport and Spot food is nothing
new to the University of La Verne campus. Complaints about undercooked,
greasy, tasteless food that leaves its connoisseurs with heartburn is something
that most ULV students deal with. Yet, the price residents are paying for
consuming this food is more than just a few hours of uncomfortable indigestion-it
is either $1,055 or $1,250 per semester.
This healthy sum of money includes either 12 or 19 meals a week, respectively-meal
plans residents are required to purchase. This allows the student either
two or three meals a day, even if he chooses not to eat them. If students
can only tolerate one meal a day in Davenport and they have the 12-meal
plan, they have lost anywhere from $4.05 to $6.50. For some, this loss of
money is of no object to avoid an evening of chicken casserole and nausea,
but the problem is that every resident is paying for this missed meal in
her meal plan.
Meanwhile, at the Spot, students are given $3.05 for breakfast, $3.40 for
lunch and $3.90 for dinner. While some students scramble to spend the full
amount by throwing in three packs of gum and a bag of chips, other students
are just slightly short. There is no sharing money or swapping change and
any left over money disappears after each meal.
Another injustice is the fact that, regardless of the amount of food one
consumes in Davenport, he or she is charged one lump sum. For a hungry football
player who eats nearly half a pizza for dinner, it costs only $6.50. For
a student that grabs a muffin on the way to class, she is charged the same
$6.50.
One solution is to charge per meal. Students choose and pay for their meal
plan at the beginning of the semester, but would receive a refund or a credit
at the end of the semester. Another solution might be to break the meal
plan down to a per-week cost, and to credit the cardholder the remaining
money from each meal. This would allow students who have not spent the full
value over the week to eat on the weekends. A refund? Extra money? This
must be a new concept for the food service industry. Of course, Aramark
may lose a little bit of money, but isn't it the poor, college students
who could use this money, especially since it was their hard-earned money
to begin with?