Meal plans are unappetizing

Like many other on-campus residents of Boise State University, I am very grateful to Table Rock Café and Aramark for providing such a great, low cost meal plan. With less than five weeks of school left, I am happy to have more than 80 meals left on my plan. It will become much harder to make it to TRC on a regular basis as the year begins to wind down and final papers and exams become a higher priority. I will be surprised if I end the year with less than 70 meals remaining.

The great thing is that all of the meals that I leave behind will likely go straight to Aramark as profit. I paid for those meals. Actually, I was forced to pay for them like all other dorm residents. However, when two thirds of the meal plan that I was forced to pay for is left unused. I receive no reimbursement.

Last semester I had 98 meals left, which would be more than $500 of food if each meal were used for breakfast, the cheapest meal. I am just glad that I am allowed, or forced, to contribute to such a great system. After all, without my donation of nearly $1,000 a year, it might be difficult for such a wonderful service to be offered to students.

Meal plans are a service, right? The whole system is in place just to give us an affordable means to get food, or at least that is what I have always been told. But if the meal plans really are here for us, why is it mandatory for all dorm residents to purchase one? Maybe it is mandatory because they are trying to save us all money by making us all buy meal plans, which lowers the average cost and makes meal plans cheaper. That makes sense, if meal plans were not mandatory, people might save that $1,200 a semester and use it toward something they actually want to eat.

Let’s use my current situation to see if I really am getting my money’s worth out of my meal plan. I tend to eat around 90 meals at TRC a semester. If I eat the 90 meals I use at TRC at another restaurant for around $7 a meal, that’s about $630. Add $325 flex dollars, the maximum available under any meal plan, and the total would be $955.

So they aren’t saving me any money at all.

If meal plans are supposed to be here for students, why aren’t we saving money? It would be much cheaper for me to eat elsewhere and I wouldn’t be forced to conform my schedule to such ridiculous hours. (What college student never needs to eat after 8 p.m.?) We are forced to purchase a meal plan if we live in a dorm, but we are not reimbursed for the meals we do not use.

I sure wouldn’t mind getting my $500 of unused meal plan back every semester. Are they providing a service, or are we providing a captive market? It looks like we are paying for the privilege to be forced to eat somewhere we don’t want to eat every single day.

MARCUS HELEKER
Opinion Writer

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