“If I could have a full meal plan, 60-block, or no meal plan, I would take no meal plan,” said junior Daisy Buller. Buller is among many students who have been frustrated with the requirement that students under the age of 21 living on campus have a meal plan. This frustration comes with the overall cost of college increasing year to year, which in part is due to an increase in the cost of meal plans. Some students feel that after already having a full meal plan for their first two years of college, they should not be obligated to be on one during their third year.
“It’s kind of expensive but I think it’s helpful getting lunch throughout the week, which is nice,” shared junior Levi Stutzman in regard to his 60-block meal plan. When it was first introduced, the 60-block was designed to be a transitional meal plan that ensures that students have some food still provided for them while they are learning how to cook for themselves, which comes at a cost. The idea of an expensive per meal cost for all the meal plans, especially the 60-block, is something that students have been thinking about a lot lately. Director for Campus Life, Scott Eyre, provided some insight into the specific numbers of what students are paying per meal.
“Currently the full meal plan, if used [the full] 520 times…would be $10.59 per meal, and the 60-block, assuming you use all 60, would be $15.35,” noted Eyre. He also supplied the featured graphic that looks at average per meal prices at EMU compared to both JMU and more similarly sized schools. This comparison extends to the structure of campus dining halls in terms of organization and open hours.
“When compared to similar schools, we have a similar model,” said Eyre. “You know the main dining hall is open for this number of hours, and there’s other options like the Den.” These operating hours, organization, and meal plan pricing are all terms negotiated in a contract between EMU’s Business Office and Pioneer, the company that provides food services. Shannon Grinnan is Pioneer’s Food Service Director at EMU, and cares deeply about the students that she serves every day. Upon starting in her current position, Grinnan successfully advocated to lengthen Caf hours from what they were previously, and is very intentional about accommodating to any special dietary needs that a student might have. The project she is currently working on is updating the Caf equipment, “we’re in the process of trying to refresh all those things,” Grinnan shared.Eyre concludes, “the realities of this are that nothing is easy…Pioneer is a business that is looking to make money, and is also going above and beyond to serve us from what the contract states to what they provide.” To find out more general information about how the money you pay for tuition, room and board gets divided up, visit https://emu.edu/business-office/tuition. If you would like to make a request or complaint, you can do so by filling out the survey located on the napkin holders on each table in the Caf.
