Meal Point Hysteria

Ideally, students should be able to use one meal point plan to purchase food at any on-campus location.

The Residence Halls Association did make one very good point at the meeting last week when it voted not to approve a Union Board proposal to introduce yet another option for on-campus food purchasing plans. The existing system is confusing and inefficient.

The option proposed by Union Board this year doesn’t improve much from the currently available “Union Plus” plan, except in that it streamlines the purchase of meal points to be used at Residential Programs and Services locations and those to be used at Sodexo-operated locations in the library and the Indiana Memorial Union.

RHA should, on behalf of the students it represents, support an effort to make the Union Plus plan available as an add-on purchase option when incoming students purchase their RPS meal points.

Some students are afraid that RHA voted against the plan out of concern for RPS’s finances, rather than for students.

The representatives maintain that they just want students to be better informed about the current options.

When assessing the plans available, it does become clear that the new plan wouldn’t offer anything drastically different from the options currently available to students.

However, it might do exactly what RHA purports to support, in making all of the plans available in one place at the same time.

RHA could show its commitment to the students it represents by continuing to work with the Union Board and other parties in order to make one Web site that explains all of the different food-purchasing plans students can choose from. Additionally, students should have access to this information and the option to choose from all available plans when they buy their RPS meal plan.  

This piecemeal compromise and “pick-and-choose” system is as good as it’s going to get – at least until 2015, when Sodexo’s contract is up.

At that point, the IMU and RPS will have a chance to come together and do what’s best for the students: one campus, one food provider, one contract, one meal plan.