Meal points to roll over into fall semester

After this year, students with meal points might never again have to storm the C-store for junk food to spend their leftover points each May.\nBeginning next spring, 75 percent of leftover points from every meal plan contract will roll over into the fall semester. \nThe Residential Programs Services' Meal Plan Committee has been discussing the possibility of making changes to the current contracts for two years, said Sandra Fowler, director of dining services. \n"The 25 percent of points that don't rollover were a compromise with the University," said Errol Huffman, business manager for Residential Programs and Services. Before now, RPS budgeted knowing it would absorb leftover points, he said. \nThe Indiana General Assembly and IU board of trustees has placed pressure on RPS to consider the impact of allowing students to retain meal points, Huffman said.\n"We've wanted to move toward this for the last couple years," Fowler said. "This is something that our department feels is a move in the right direction."\nThe current meal plan contracts are still fairly new. The idea of students having only meal points instead of a set number of meals per week came in 1998, Huffman said. Many other universities with similar plans do not allow points to rollover from year to year, and IU modeled the current contracts off this idea, Fowler said.\nFowler said that students' questioning why their meal points didn't roll over was one of the major reasons for this change.\n"The contract hasn't changed drastically, and I don't think that it will," Fowler said. "But we'll continue to fine-tune it."\nFreshman Amanda Topper said the new contract will be a benefit to future students using meal points. She said she thinks the change will cut down on frivolous spending by students in a rush to use their remaining points at the end of the semester.\n"I think it's great that RPS has finally realized the need for this," Topper said. "Now students won't need to worry about having too many meal points at the end of the year and rushing to the C-Store."\nFreshman Alana Hahn agrees. Hahn said that several girls on her floor had more than 400 extra points last semester, which she attributes to the large size of meal plans.\n"Letting the points roll over is a good thing because even the smallest plan has too many points, especially for girls," Hahn said. "At least now the extra points won't go to waste."\nHuffman said that the leftover points will be beneficial to all students, even those who don't choose to live a second year in the residence halls.\n"It will be easy for residents to utilize (the leftover points) even if they don't move back in to RPS housing, especially with the new SRSC kiosk," Huffman said. \nHe also said students who choose to remain on campus during the summer will benefit from the ability to use their extra meal points instead of purchasing a new plan.\n"In the long run, we believe this will benefit everyone," Fowler said.\nThe contracts will continue to evolve in the future, and student suggestions are taken into consideration each year, Fowler said.\n"We've already got plans for next year and the years to follow," Huffman said.