According to UT Dining Services, “Your meal plan/ meal exchange program is designed for your personal use only.” Why? If I am pre paying for a set amount of meals, why does it matter who uses them?
I should be able to use my meal plan however I want to.
I pay $2,132 a semester for my meal plan. I have 15 meals that I can use per week and 100 Spartan dollars per semester. If I don’t use all of my meal exchanges do I get my money back? No. I lose them.
I don’t understand why I can’t use my meal exchanges for other students. I already paid for my meal plan, so why is how I use them restricted?
When asked, dining services wrote, “The price of each meal plan presumes only the personal use of the meals each week when the plan was priced. The consequence of a free exchange of meals would be a higher price for the plan each semester and this would not benefit the majority of the students who contract for meals.”
It’s not like I’m using more than I agreed to pay for. I’m just using all of what I am allowed to. If I paid for 15 meals a week, dining services (Sodexo) should expect me to consume 15 meals a week. Are they overselling meals like airlines oversell tickets? If that’s the case, they are actually profiting from restricting student’s use of their meals. That can’t be justified as saving students money. That can only be explained as corporate greed.
Also, while I cannot use a meal exchange for someone else, I am allowed to use Spartan Dollars. How is that fair? So I have to use a precious commodity that does carry through semesters, rather than using my meals which renew weekly. Is this policy in place so that we burn through our Spartan Dollars quickly and we end up using cash to get items not specific to meal exchanges?
What frustrates me the most about the meal exchanges at UT? It’s the lack of uniform enforcement.
At certain locations, I can buy a friend a meal with a meal exchange. Others, however, I am forced to use Spartan Dollars. That tells me that it’s a rule that actually doesn’t have to be in place; rather it’s a policy that dining services wants in place. Last year, I bought meal exchanges for my friends every week. All of a sudden I can’t.
It’s not fair, and it’s not about saving the student money. It’s about saving Sodexo money.
Pranav Lokin can be reached at pranavlokin@yahoo.com