Dining Services announced this week that last semester’s A La Board meal plan trial will be extended and debut under a new name this semester, despite complexities revealed in last semester’s test run.
Originally drafted to offer students flexibility with a revised point system designed for use at other on-campus locations besides the dining halls, such as the Stamp Student Union Food Court, the newly named “All-Campus Dining Plan” is again being offered to a limited number of students on a trial basis. By offering the trial a second time, officials hope to clarify what were deemed inconclusive results from last year’s trial.
The plan features roll-over points from semester to semester, a component users of the plan praised last year. But Dining Services officials and Residence Halls Association leaders also found the plan to be highly confusing, and too confusing for some students signed up for the trial run.
“Some people spent down their money too fast because they were enjoying food at the Union, but they were not using the Diner as their major food source,” Director of Dining Services Pat Higgins said. “We’re saying up front, it’s not for everybody.”
If used restrictively in dining halls, the plan was designed to closely match the standard Campus Plan, while still allowing students to use their meal points in other locations. Students wishing to use their points at McDonald’s in the Student Union, for example, would pay a higher mark-up so Dining Services could cover the dining halls’ operating costs, which stay the same no matter where students eat, said Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple.
Under the All-Campus plan, a dining hall hamburger would be sold at its advertised price, but if a student buys a $2.59 Big Mac in the Student Union, it would cost an equivalent of $10.26 in meal points.
The plan includes a slew of ratios that change depending on where students choose to dine, and many plan users struggled to grasp the ratios between the points on their plan and the money they were paying into it, Higgins said.
“It was too confusing,” RHA Vice President Sumner Handy said. “How many students are going to sit down and calculate how much a Big Mac will cost them in meal points?”
But after a six-week trial of the former A La Board plan among select RHA officials, the RHA told Dining Services last year’s plan confused students too much, but agreed to renew the trial for another semester to try to improve it, Handy said.
“I think both of us thought that it could be improved,” RHA President Michael LaBattaglia said. “A lot of the RHA senators felt the point system was a little confusing. It seemed like you had to think hard to use the meal plan.”
But despite complaints about the intricacies of the plan, Hipple said Dining Services was unable to find a more straightforward way to structure the plan.
“There was enough support for it that it seemed worthwhile to continue,” Hipple said. “We can’t find a way that’s simpler and also makes sense.”
Under the new trial, Dining Services and the RHA will make few changes other than the name, which was copied from a plan used at another university. Dining Services will keep the plan’s basic spending structure and use the same ratio, but attempt to address the confusion by requiring users to attend an orientation session before they begin using All-Campus Dining.
The trial is available to about 125 students who have been using meal plans for two previous semesters, and RHA leaders hope to pinpoint advantages and disadvantages of last semester’s plan, LaBattaglia said.
Some students, particularly those with exceptionally large and small appetites, were able to benefit from the plan last semester, Higgins said. Small eaters were able to take advantage of its added flexibility, while large eaters were able to benefit from the plan’s various levels, where students who bought food in bulk were given discounts.
On levels five and six, students received points for less than their cash value if they were to be spent solely at the diner, she said.
Still, the complexity of the point system has bogged down the plan’s progress, LaBattaglia said.
“We learned from the first trial that the plan was confusing to a lot of students,” he said. “In the second trial we’re going to try to find what exactly about the plan is confusing and we’re going to try to improve on that.
“If exchange rates are going to stay the same then what we’d like to see is a push to really make this plan easy to understand so it will really benefit students the most,” LaBattaglia said. “What we want is for them to come up with some kind of a system to educate the student on the plan as to how to get the most out of the plan as possible.”
Despite the complexity of the plan, students remain optimistic about the possibility of a plan allowing for increased flexibility.
“I would like to have a way where the dining hall meal points could be used at the Union,” sophomore fire protection engineer major Joe Miracle said. “I wish money could be used more places than just two dining halls.”
Trouble with the All-Campus Plan
A trial found the point conversions were too hard to follow and students prematurely ran out of points.
Cash to point conversion:
Cost of $1 item at the dining hall .34 points
Cost of $1 item at cafes and quick foods: .5 points
Cost of $1 item at convenience shops: .7 points
Cost of $1 item at food court: 1 point
Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.
