PLU’s mandatory dining plan is outdated and student wellness is suffering from the unfairly priced dining packages and restrictive hours. Dining staff are worse off as demands increase and pay remains at minimum — or close to it. This is not because the cost of food has gone up or staff are overpaid. PLU Dining has a massive surplus to their budget at the end of every year. A surplus that goes to “plug in holes elsewhere in the [university’s] budget,” according to Associate Vice President of Hospitality, Retail, Dining, and Catering Services Erin McGinnis. This year, “all you care to eat” (AYCTE) meals cost more for PLU students with a meal plan than a visitor without one.
The basic structure of the PLU meal plan has two parts. Beloved by many students, the AYCTE package includes brunch on Sundays and buffet-style dinners every night except Saturday. The rest of student meals are covered by “dining dollars” — money loaded onto students’ accounts that can be used to purchase food at OMM or the Commons. McGinnis explained that the uncommon two-part system was chosen for PLU by a consultant hired years ago. AYCTE periods help balance cost for students with higher caloric needs so as not to discriminate based on activity level or body type. The dining dollar periods are designed to include the larger PLU community. For alumni, professors, etc. getting lunch is more approachable than student-dominated dinner.
AYCTE meals are ‘free,’ in that students don’t pay Dining Dollars for these meals but have already been charged for them when they paid for their meal plan at the beginning of the semester. First-year students can pick from options A-D with descending amounts of dining dollars. According to PLU Dining’s website, A is for students who “spend the majority of their time on campus,” B is the default plan for students who eat “many of their meals on campus,” and C and D have progressively less dining dollars while all giving access to the same AYCTE benefits. Meal plan D, specifically, is a scam. It costs about $100 less than meal plan C, but you get $460 less dining dollars. The extra money all goes into the AYCTE section, making the average price per AYCTE session $23. Alumni or guests can pay $19 at the door without a meal plan.
Meal plan D is supposed to be an option for students trying to save money. It is unethical and unacceptable to be upcharging a plan that targets PLU’s most financially stressed students.
Meal plans A-C, although they avoid being outright exploitative, all cost over $19 per AYCTE meal (AYCTE price ÷ 14 weeks x 7 meals per week). What discount are students getting? If you want this to hurt your mental wallet even more, imagine losing $19 every time you nap through dinner.
The official dining dollar budget page from Campus Restaurants reveals that their budget is calculated for a six day week “since the 7th day (Sunday) is AYCTE all day long.” The charts featured are based on a seven day week because while Sunday is AYCTE all day, Saturday does not have any AYCTE meals, so the effect on long term budgeting cancels out. There is one AYCTE meal per day even if one is displaced slightly.
Even the largest meal plan does not allot enough money for a student to feed themselves properly while living on campus full-time. One sandwich at OMM is $5-15; a meal from the Commons is about the same. With less than $15 a day, students have barely enough money for two meals—and that’s as long as they never miss an AYCTE period and have to buy a replacement meal at OMM. Snacks and coffee are certainly out of the question unless nutritional or caloric needs are being neglected.
The most disturbing aspect of the meal plan is the inescapability of it. McGinnis shared that the meal plan is mandatory so as not to overcrowd the dorm kitchens—which do not have the capacity to support residents cooking for themselves regularly. She did not hide the fact that the choice was not made for student wellness, but instead to band-aid over a weakness in PLU’s residence hall planning. PLU administration seems to often resolve issues this way, but they never clue students in on it. We deserve transparency if we are suffering from their ill attempts at good dorm design.
The typical PLU student will be required to live on campus for the first two years of their education. Dorms available to first and second-year students mandate the purchase of a dining plan. Upper-division students have the chance to gain admission to either Harstad or South Hall. Both halls give students access to meal plan E, which has no All You Care to Eat (AYCTE) charge, only a mandatory $624 dining dollar purchase per semester. South also gives residents the choice to opt out of a meal plan altogether. Spaces in these halls are limited, though, thus guaranteeing PLU a steady stream of income from anyone who couldn’t land a spot in upper-division housing.
The fault for this cannot be placed entirely upon PLU Dining. Throughout the interview with McGinnis, it was clear that PLU’s monetary demands made it impossible to budget dining without making some sort of sacrifice. She explained that the budget for tuition, dining, and housing are all decided by the Budget Advisory Committee. This means that when the dining team is working on their budget they have very limited options: raise prices, cut labor, or shorten hours. McGinnis talked about the change last year to cut Saturday dinners with an apologetic, but defeated tone “There was no other place to cut at that point.” She expressed a similar sentiment about cutting shifts for workers and not being able to hire as many people on. Given the Commons’ longstanding struggles to maintain a stable kitchen staff, the infamously bad work environment will likely continue to fester.
That aside, where the fault lies does not matter except for administration’s own internal politics. The pricing of PLU’s meal plan options is concretely coercive and damaging. The question that arises is ultimately one of intent: ignorance or malice? PLU’s rules and regulations are suffocated—as most institutions are—by tradition. This regularly leads students to protest these unjust restrictions as they become irrelevant. The PLU community can only continue to hope that PLU administration keeps an open mind to the issues their students bring forward and works in good faith to correct this before it hurts future Lutes.
