by Michelle Willson, Feature/Entertainment Editor
If you are a student that lives on campus, you have dealt with a meal plan and flex dollars. For those who are not familiar, each meal plan comes with flex dollars that can only be spent in the student center Ranger Market. I love the flex dollars because it gives students the ability to grab something to eat when their schedules do not allow them enough time to make it to the café for lunch.
I have no problem with the flex dollars. The problem comes with the meal plans. On our campus, you can choose between eight, 12 or 17 meals a week which gives students many options but if they do not use those meals throughout the week they disappear into an empty void and the student cannot retrieve them losing the money that they spent.
I used to be on the 12-meal plan but my schedule did not allow me enough time to get lunch any day. Therefore, I could only eat nine meals a week. Most people would say, “Just move down a meal plan” but by the time, you realize you that you’re wasting that many meals the time to switch meal plans has closed. I lost three meals a week for a whole semester because I missed the deadline.
There are many stories like mine. I know students who waste almost all their entire meal plan every week while they juggle work, school and clubs. The university should implement a way that some of the money goes back to the student.
The deadline to change your meal plan for spring semesters in January 24 but classes take the first week for the semester to get into the grove of things. Class might end earlier that week than it will the rest of the semester, allowing enough time to eat between classes that you will not get further in the year.
My idea is that at the end of the week the meals missed could change into Flex dollars that could still be used by the student. The flex dollars could still expire at the end of the year, or they could change that so the flex dollars did not expire until you graduated or dropped out.
When talking with a friend about our meal plans they suggested that we should be able to swipe more than once for a meal. At this point, it is set up so a student can only swipe themselves in.
My friend said that we should make it so we can swipe other people in to use up our meals for the week. We pay for out meal plan we should be able to use it.
We need to completely change the system we use but there are ways that we could change the system to benefit the students. Changing the system would allow students to eat a snack or sandwich between classes when they don’t have time for a real meal. The students not using their meals are most likely the ones who need the flex dollars the most.