Category | Op Ed

Meal plan madness

Published on September 16, 2008 by The Sentinel

    Are you ready for your total of tuition and fees to go up by $400 (roughly 23%) next year? For what, you might ask?


    

     KSU is building a new 1,000 seat dining hall between the Burruss building and the new Health Sciences Building off of Frey road. Your fees will go up because you will be forced to buy a meal plan starting next year.

    When describing the plan KSU President Daniel Papp said, “All undergraduate, full-time students will have to purchase a $400 to $425-a-semester meal plan, with the option of upgrading it. It will permit a student to 50 entries per semester into the dining hall, and also will include $25 flex dollars to be used at retail locations on campus that only offer food.” The plan has each entry into the meal hall costing roughly $8 to $8.50.

    The mandate does not differentiate between residents and commuters. If you are a full time undergrad, you will be paying for this meal plan with no exceptions.

       So why does the new dining hall require everyone to get a meal plan? Without the mandate, there would not be enough revenue to cover the cost of operation and building the dining hall. In other words, there would not be enough students getting the meal plan to pay for the dining hall. This is understandable from a pure business standpoint, but there is something wrong with this logic in how it relates to students and parents.

    We are told that students and parents have been demanding facilities like the ones at UGA and other large institutions. But if students and parents so desire a dining hall with meal plans and Auxiliary Services believes full-time students will eat on campus anyway, why on Earth does it require a mandate?

    One argument you might hear is that other schools are doing the mandatory meal plans and that it is not uncommon. This is true, but misses the point. UGA and Georgia Tech need meal plans because their student population largely consists of on-campus residents who lack kitchens in their dorms. One must wonder what the point of all KSU on-campus residents having a full kitchen is when they have to get a meal plan. Some might point to the two year old Georgia Gwinnett College, which requires a meal plan for an all commuter student population. But is it fair to compare the third largest college in Georgia to a brand new college that has less than 700 full time undergraduate students?

    These new fees will really hurt many of the people to whom KSU was originally intended to offer opportunities. The commuter students with full time jobs, families, or both will have to sacrifice more of their money and time at KSU (assuming they would want to eat here to not waste it). The bottom-line meal plan provides three to four entries into the dining hall per week. So what about those students who only come in to school two days a week? They get an even shorter end of the stick.

    There is something we as students can do about this before we run out of time. Have your opinion heard at two Open Campus Forums, both on Tues., Sept. 22. The first is from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM, and the second from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM, to discuss the budget and any other issues that may arise. They will both be held in the University Rooms of the Student Center.

    I have no problem with KSU trying to become like other traditional colleges suited for resident students. But at this time, KSU houses only around 3,000 students out of a population of roughly 20,000. This transformation cannot happen overnight, and should not be carried by current students. If there is no demand for a dining hall with a meal plan, it can wait. There are plenty of other things to be done to help the growth of KSU.