UI must improve campus eating options
Pretty much all college students are locked in a mortal conflict with food. College food is either too expensive, too fattening or just takes too long to cook.
To enable students to at least make it through their freshman year without having to apply hunting or gathering skills, the University of Idaho requires most people living on campus to purchase meal plans. Most meal plans cost around $1,800 and include multiple, possibly unlimited trips to Bob’s Place, along with Flex Dollars to be spent at fast food restaurants across campus.
The problem with requiring people to purchase one of UI’s meal plans is not the quality of the food, as 80 percent of the student body would have you to believe. It’s that the structure of the meal plan system encourages rampant overeating, overspending and overall student dissatisfaction.
Bob’s Place, UI’s main meal source, offers a buffet-style restaurant that allows UI to feed massive amounts of college students at once during high-traffic meal times. However, unleashing a hungry student upon a mountain of food does not create incentives for healthy eating. When faced with choosing one meal out of Bob’s smorgasbord, a hungry student often goes with many unhealthy food options, instead of the healthier choices.
Making someone pay a flat rate for access to food options creates the mindset that you must get what you paid for. It is unlikely anyone who bought the Vandal Pride dining plan is going to enter Bob’s and pay over $10 per meal to eat a salad and some fruit.
The pricing of the meal plan and associated Flex Dollars teaches students that it is reasonable to spend exorbitant amounts of money on food. College should be a time of saving money, yet people who live on campus are forced to, in some cases, spend over $10 a meal on food. Additionally, students are made to spend Flex Dollars at many overpriced options across campus to get the most out of their meal plan.
The meal plans are indeed forced to be used, since students who purchase them must use the Flex Dollars by the end of the year and Bob’s meals by the end of the semester. Failure to spend either by those deadlines results in the meal options expiring.
To make the meal plan healthier and more cost effective for students, UI should take some of several options to revamp dining available on campus. To start with, Bob’s could be structured so that students can choose what they wanted to eat and then pay for it — similar to the food court in the Idaho Commons. That way, students can pay for only what they want to eat and that would hopefully encourage students to choose cheaper, healthier options.
For the meal plan structure itself, both meals at Bob’s and Flex Dollars should roll over between semesters until the end of the year. Students who pay for block meals or a certain amount of meals per week at Bob’s should be rewarded for using meals when they are hungry, instead of being punished at the end of semester by losing any extra meals. Students should also be given the option on all meal plans to utilize extra meals as guest passes, since the person paying for them should get to choose how they are spent.
Freshmen have enough to worry about without fearing the legendary Freshman 15. By making a couple changes to the dining options on campus, UI can encourage healthy eating and a healthier student body.
Aleya Ericson can be reached at [email protected]