Whenever I pictured college when I was in high school I pictured meeting new people, doing incredible things, and being a part of an amazing community where I can experience new things. College always seems so glamorous to high school students that the horrible parts of it seem to just be natural. This includes being broke, not being able to sleep, and having to eat Ramen to get through the day.

All of those things are pretty horrible but I truly feel that our meal plans are one of the worst things that we have to constantly have to deal with. Our meal plans are based off of what the administration believes we will be spending regularly with several different meal plans.

Some meal plans include: the bronze meal plan which is the minimum meal plan for freshman and sophomores which has $1,620 which every freshman starts off with. The estimated daily average is $14 for this meal plan. Freshman have the option to increase their meal plan but most choose not to because it's out of pocket money that they don't have.

Other meal plans that they can possibly choose to upgrade to are Silver ($1,800) with a daily average of $16, Gold ($2,000) with a daily average of $18, and Platinum ($2,175) with a daily average of $20. This may seem reasonable for college students but a lot of the time normal college students go hungry because the meal plan isn't enough money.

Dining halls have crazy high prices that leave a lot of college students hungry by the end of the semester. On average a meal at Kessel Student Center, the dining hall at the Pleasantville campus of Pace University costs about $10 and maybe more depending on what you want to eat. If you have the bronze meal plan then you can only spend about $5 per meal for 3 meals a day.

I think it's ridiculous that students have to go through so much trouble to make sure they're not spending too much money on food as college students. We already sell our souls to the devil by taking out loans, slave away day and night to work and maintain a good GPA to not lose our scholarships, and on top of that colleges are making more money off of us by making us go hungry. Food should be a right, not a privilege.

Not to mention that when we're juniors and seniors our minimum meal plans reduce to $850 per semester. In what world does that seem fair? Pace administration believes that our meal plans should be less as upperclassmen because we will most likely be off campus and be busy with internships and jobs so they don't want to spend the extra money on us.

I can understand how this can be a logical explanation but it no longer seems logical once people understand just how expensive a meal at a dining hall is. If dining hall food was cheaper, then not only would it improve a college student's health but it would also help the school's reputation.

Everyone wants to go to a school where the school cares about the student. Please don't let us go hungry, Pace.