Washakie Dining Center has unreasonable meal plans for freshmen. With only two weekly meal plan options or a whole semester estimate, students, specifically freshmen, are forced to pay for meals they aren’t even eating. Students should have the option to customize a meal plan that is right for them.
Currently, freshmen can choose between 12 or 15 meals a week with an additional amount of $100-$125 worth of dining dollars that they can spend at any other on-campus food location. The only other option is choosing a set amount of meals for the whole semester. This option cannot be changed once purchased and can be frustrating for freshman who might not know what they need before starting classes.
Instead of giving students a small variety of options to choose from, there should be an online creator that allows them to make their own plan based on their needs, living situations, and how often they plan to eat in the dining hall.
Freshmen automatically pay $11-$15 per meal in the dining hall whether they choose to eat there or not, which is not financially reasonable for many. As long as they are living in the residence halls, it is their only choice. At the end of the year, instead of getting their unused meal balance, they receive the “dining dollars” they didn’t spend at other locations on campus.
To add to the student perspective, if a freshman were to choose 12 meals per week, they would be paying a total of $2,568 per semester with an additional $125 dining dollar amount put onto their card. To some, this may not seem like a lot, but the more meals the student chooses to not eat, the more money that is lost to the university. There is currently no refund for meal plan money that was never used.
Other universities in the country have meal plans that include fewer meals a week and more “flex” dollars than that of UW’s options. For example, the University of Georgia began offering customizable meal plans in their 2021-2022 school year. Their dining meal plans offer 5 or 7 day unlimited access.
With everyone’s health needs being different and constantly changing, it would be in the student’s best interest to create a meal plan that would meet their personal needs and goals.
Washakie only has a small selection of gluten-free options and they aren’t easy to find inside. In a seemingly hidden section around a corner, there are limited choices for those who are gluten-free. If one only relies on that for their meals, they may have to find food somewhere else anyways.
The idea behind the customizable option is that students will have the opportunity to plan out their own eating schedules by selecting their own amount of meals a week and depending on the number they choose, determines how many “dining dollars” they will get with that choice.
Dining dollars are also something that can be loaded onto a student ID, so if a student is not satisfied with the amount given, based on their meal-per-week choice, then they can add more money from their own pocket.
Although the university wants the idea of first-year students to get out into the community and be in a new environment meeting new people, it’s not reasonable to be paying for meal plans that are not beneficial to individuals.
