Now Serving: Dining Disappointments
By Rylee Baker
Your everyday diet affects your sleep, mood, energy levels, how well you learn, and the list could go on and on. So, it’s no surprise the new meal plan is bothering people because students are now stuck with a diet that fights against them with every bite.
There’s a unanimous feeling among returning students at Susquehanna University: disappointment. After all the positive chatter and promotion of the renovations at Degenstein Campus Center, I wasn’t expecting to feel so frustrated and defeated, but clearly, I’m not the only one, with platforms like YikYak and Fizz blowing up with dining hall hate.
To make one thing abundantly clear, the heads of dining and all the dining employees did not make this decision alone. It was a group effort to devise what they believed was the best plan that fit within their budget. Was it the best decision, in my opinion? No, it could be exponentially better. But that doesn’t give students permission to be cruel and hateful towards dining employees; they are people, too.
Previously, the meal plans worked like this: you could have either 14, 21 or 35 meal swipes a week, with the choice of $100 or $175 in flex. Each meal swipe was worth $8; therefore, if you got a meal that was over or under $8, you could use multiple meal swipes or pay the remaining balance in flex. There was also a limit of five swipes a day to prevent people from bulk-buying items.
Options were everywhere with this plan, with meal swipes working at all locations except Starbucks. This allowed students to have a diverse range of foods and a plethora of customizable options.
Well, most of what sounded good about the previous meal plan is gone. Some of the new meal plans include unlimited meal swipe access to the Everett dining hall, while others do not. The basic “orange” plan includes 14 swipes per week that can be used on retail options, unlimited access to the dining hall, and $50 in flex. Let’s get one thing clear: $50 is laughable.
Some comments on YikYak made by students anonymously show the true feelings of many with one user expressing that, “ordering from Scholarly with the new meal plan makes me want to cry.”
And another writing, “Can someone in SGA start a petition against these stupid meal plans? Like, seriously, I think everyone would sign it.”
So why is this happening? If students hate these new plans so much, and it’s significantly more limiting, why does Susquehanna continue to move forward with it?
Well, that’s a question I believed would be answered in the previous Dining Discussions held by the Student Government Association (SGA). The event allowed students to speak to two of the heads of dining and have an open discussion about the meal plan. As the SGA dining liaison, I had to attend with high hopes of getting some answers.
Up on stage was General Manager of Dining, Heather Hausman, and Aramark Marketing Manager Eran Haupt, who opened the discussion by saying, “We can’t make changes without student feedback!” Encouraging words that would soon fall flat.
A presentation of the new meal plan was displayed at the beginning of the event, with Hausman and Haupt explaining how each meal plan worked, along with some new things coming in what Hausman described as “phase two.” Phase two would include renovations to the dining hall and would debut after winter break and include things like new combo meals at Scholarly Grounds and upcoming protein bowls at Firebox. Nothing else discussed at the meeting is set in stone.
One point that was made clear at the beginning was about retail dining options. “Other schools don’t allow swipes on retail dining,” Hausman stated as a justification for taking most meal options away from the meal plan.
She’s not wrong. Most schools usually don’t allow swipes on retail options, but other schools also don’t require their students to have a meal plan for all four years or live on campus all four years of their college career.
Not to mention, other schools provide much more flex than Susquehanna. According to Bloomsburg University’s dining page, the lowest amount of flex you can get is $250, with the most expensive meal plan costing $2,000. A regular meal plan at Susquehanna costs over $7,000 for the entire academic year (two semesters). Just let that sink in.
So, no, using the comparison of other schools not allowing swipes on their retail location isn’t valid at all.
During student questioning, one student informed the audience that, “to add a slice of cheese to my sandwich costs $1, which means I can only get 50 slices of cheese with all my flex.” An odd but eye-opening point.
Another student caused a bit of an uproar when she asked, “I just wanted to know why our meal swipes don’t carry over into the next week if we don’t use them? I mean, we paid for them.”
Haupt responded first, stating, “Well, if we allow students to keep their swipes all semester, some will end up spending like 14 swipes all in one day on soda. Which then means they aren’t getting nutritious food, and our inventory is screwed up.”
This is a valid point in my opinion, except that there’s a very easy solution. Just add a cap on the number of swipes students can use in a day, without having to sacrifice them all at the end of the week.
Also, I work as a student manager at Scholarly Grounds, and our inventory is counted and ordered every week based on what we are out of and need more of. So, if one week we sell a lot of drinks with oat milk, we may order an extra case of oat milk. So, I’m not understanding how something like this would mess up inventory. If someone gets a lot of soda, they pay for it, so order more?
“If you look at the macros of a coffee,” Haupt began, “you’ll see that it’s not very nutritious. Your swipes need to go to nutritious meals, that’s why you get a main, a side and a drink.”
I have an issue with this. First off, I’m an adult, and I don’t need anyone to tell me what to eat. If I want coffee for breakfast, then that’s what I should be able to get. The idea of the meal swipes going towards full healthy meals was stressed repeatedly. If healthy meals are the center of these new meal plans, then why can I only get fried food or burgers at Firebox for a Hawk Meal Swipe? All the healthier, grilled options are locked away under flex.
The same student went on, “I just feel like we’re all adults who can choose what to eat and ration our flex. You should just put a cap on how many swipes-” but she was then interrupted by Haupt.
“So would you rather use 14 meal swipes in one day and then starve the rest of the week?” he asked sarcastically.
The entire auditorium erupted in screams. The student was only asking a very valid question that had nothing to do with spending every meal swipe in one day.
As the student was struggling to talk over the screams, Haupt continued to say into the mic, “Just answer the questions.” It was rude, unempathetic and arrogant.
Diningwill probably never bring back the old plan. An answer as to why was never given. Instead, we were told that we needed the school to portion and pick our food, with someone who has never been a student at SU trying to tell us we should be grateful. With the statement, “I don’t want to take swipes away from retail locations,” said by Haupt multiple times, almost as a threat.
I fear that these plans won’t change anytime soon. Although I don’t place the blame on Hausman or Haupt because it wasn’t a decision they made single-handedly, they clearly don’t hear the students, and their pleas are seen as tantrums. All I can leave you with as dining liaison is to keep complaining and trying, hopefully things will get better, even if it’ll never go back to the way it was.