Dining Services held a town hall forum Tuesday night to address student questions on the anytime-dining program that will launch in the fall, but few students actually turned up.
About 22 students attended the meeting, but most were involved with the Residence Hall Association, which held its own town hall forum March 8 to discuss new dining plans and other changes to the campus.
“It was a smaller crowd, and it was great to have the RHA here, but I had hoped to have some students that might have had some other concerns,” said Colleen Wright-Riva, director of Dining Services.
Beginning in the fall, dining halls will transition from a points-based system to an anytime-dining setup that will allow students to eat any number of meals at a fixed rate but will eliminate carryout options.
Wright-Riva said Dining Services sent more than 8,500 emails outlining the new program and announcing the town hall event to students with meal plans before spring break.
“Today was our effort from a dining perspective to make sure that every student who is coming back to housing next year is properly informed on the changes we are making,” Wright-Riva said.
Freshman Shannon McDonell, who attended the town hall, said she learned about the event through the Dining Services email and was interested in learning more about the hand scanners that will be installed to grant entry to the dining halls.
“My friend and I are kind of getting paranoid about this, just because it seems kind of weird, to put it in the most succinct way,” the history and secondary education major said.
Wright-Riva and Bart Hipple, a spokesman for Dining Services, explained that the hand scanners will store only a hexadecimal number associated with the patterns of users’ hands, not information about their actual hands.
“The beauty of the biometrics we have decided to purchase is that it’s not storing information in any way that can be retrievable to cause you security concerns,” Wright-Riva said.
She said the dining halls will also introduce healthier options with less of a focus on protein, although the menus have not yet been finalized.
In addition to a vegan station at each of the dining halls, students can expect to see more whole grains and a smoothie station, which will offer two different daily smoothies.
“Part of me thinks students have gotten used to the ideas and there’s a lot to like, and I think that’s outweighing some of the lesser things,” Wright-Riva said. “Or maybe they’re busy with their semester.”
