THE FACTS: University Dining allows students to use their meal plans to cover $4.25, $5.00 and $5.25 for breakfast, lunch and dinner, respectively, at non-dining hall locations.
OUR OPINION: While this flexibility is admirable, Dining should consider innovative ways to allow students to get more at alternative dining locations covered by their meal plans.
It may be due to oversleeping and needing a quick meal before class. It may be due to the fact students can only eat so many meals at a dining hall before wanting something different. Whatever the case, the meal equivalencies offer students the opportunity to eat at locations that do no end in the words “dining hall.”
But despite the fact that N.C. State has one of the better meal equivalency plans in the state, University Dining should explore more options to enable students to get more food (or enough food) at any of the non-dining hall locations that accept equivalencies. At the very least, Dining should make the limits of the equivalencies and the methods by which one can pay the remaining balance clear to students and parents.
As it stands, breakfast, lunch and dinner are worth $4.25, $5.00 and $5.25, respectively. Yet often times these amounts do not cover the costs of a decent meal at locations like the Atrium, the Wolves’ Den or the numerous Port City Javas on campus. Often, students must use Board Bucks or All-Campus accounts to cover the remaining balance after the equivalency is applied.
University Dining should explore ways to improve the value of the meal equivalencies at other locations. Students often do not have the luxury of going out of their way and taking the time to eat at the dining halls, and the other dining locations tend to see heavy traffic throughout the day. Dining may wish to reconsider their financial system to increase the value of the meal equivalencies or look for innovative ways to decrease the costs at non-dining hall locations.
However, there may be practical realities and costs preventing such a move.
The least University Dining could do is make it explicitly clear to parents and students that the meal plan only covers a portion of the costs of a purchase at other on-campus dining locations. Dining must make sure whoever picks up the bill for a meal plan should be aware Board Bucks and All-Campus accounts are used to pay the remainder after the meal equivalencies are applied. This allows parents and students to plan accordingly when purchasing meal plans, Board Bucks and All-Campus accounts.
When it comes to food, no one can please everyone all of the time. But University Dining may want to consider ways to make some of the more popular locations on campus more palatable to the wallet as well.
