St. Lawrence, A New Meal Plan Is Coming

So we all know the meal plan is already an issue. Most people are running out of money by now and that always seems to be the case, especially for people who eat at the Pub more than Dana which is probably more than half of the campus. Between Caramel Highrises in the morning and panini's from Spartacus cafe in the afternoon, by the time dinner comes around you've spent almost all of your allotted $11 for the day.

People have been asking for the meal plan to be changed for a long time, because by the end of each semester most of us have to add money to our pre-established allowance of $1000 dollars for food each semester. It's obvious that something needs to change, for with the current plan an average student can't eat three meals a day and have enough money to do so for the entire semester.

A new meal plan that is being proposed would be implemented in August 2017, and would severely change the eating culture at SLU as current students know it. The new plan would essentially force students to eat 3 meals a day, 7 days a week at Dana with some dining bucks that would go towards eating at the satellite cafes around campus. The dining bucks would increase with your class year, with some additional "meal swaps" from the Pub, meaning you could switch one of your meals from Dana for the special of the day at the Pub.

While this new system would fix the issue of running out of money, it would create an entirely new set of problems for the students of St. Lawrence. The system is extremely inconvenient, especially for students with schedules that make it hard for them to eat at normal times like, biology majors, or athletes who have to eat around practice times. For the regular St. Lawrence student, who is involved in an array of different organizations and clubs, the new system makes scheduling increasingly difficult.

While on the new plan Dana plans to open at 7:30 am and stay open continuously to 8 pm, every student knows that Dana currently does not have enough seats to house the entire student body for three meals a day, 7 days a week.

This new meal plan would severely limit the amount of freedom that students have in choosing the kind of food we can eat on campus and when. Instead of being able to plan on where you eat based on your schedule, we would have to start planning our schedule around when we would eat.

A new meal plan is coming, but we do have the ability to give constructive criticism and express our concerns about it? Keep this in mind while voting for new positions in Thelmo this Wednesday, and be on the lookout for opportunities to voice your opinion.