At EMU, students are required to buy full meal plans for as long as they live in the dorms. I am in my third year and have lived in a dorm the entire time I have been here for a variety of reasons. This means that each semester I am required to buy a full meal plan. But is it really worth it? Should students in dorms be required to buy full meal plans?
A full meal plan costs $2,380. The plan pays for 20 meals per week — breakfast, lunch, and dinner Sunday-Friday and brunch and dinner Saturday — so each meal costs $7.93. Then, multiplying the 20 meals per week by the number of weeks in the semester, we can see that a full meal plan pays for 320 meals each semester, not taking into account breaks and such. If I only attend a few lunches and a few dinners each week, as I usually do each semester due to reasons I will give later, then we can assume that I will attend seven meals each week, missing 13. If each meal costs $7.93, then those 13 meals cost me, in total, about $103 each week. If I continue this pattern over the course of the entire semester, I lose out on $1,650. That is a LOT of money for a college student trying to balance debt and loans.
I understand why the university would want first-years to pay for full meal plans. First-years are still acclimating to their new surroundings, discovering what friend groups they fall in to, and adapting to new schedules and expectations. Requiring a full meal plan encourages them to attend meals at the dining hall and socialize.
But for juniors, and even sophomores, requiring a full meal plan is, frankly, ridiculous. We have, to a certain extent, already found our groups. We have adapted to the schedule and the work. We are familiar with our surroundings. Additionally, I myself often do not end up going to the dining hall for meals for a few different reasons, and I suspect that others do not as well.
One reason is I have so much homework to do. Taking upper-level classes requires you to put more hours in the week into those classes’ work. Walking up to the dining hall, sitting and eating, and walking back takes up time that I could be using to get things done. I would rather work through dinner and have time to relax later in the evening than take a dinner break and work up until bedtime.
Another reason is sometimes I do not want to socialize. I am an introvert, and I have to ration my socialization time or I get burnt out. Socialization takes energy, and I do not want to socialize when I am trying to recharge my batteries.
Lastly, the dining hall does not always have good food. I appreciate everything the staff at the dining hall does and all the hard work they put in to provide for us, but there are not always enough options — especially for vegetarians — particularly at dinner.
It is nearly impossible, I know, for them to supply options that will satisfy everyone. This means, however, that in addition to having a bunch of homework to do and not wanting to socialize, I also do not have the incentive of getting to eat something I enjoy, which I could do if I cooked for myself. And cooking for myself would also require money, but I could shop in bulk and easily spend less than $7.93 per meal when cooking.
Going back to the numbers I listed earlier, if I miss 13 meals a week each semester for two years, I lose out on $6,598. Even if I attended most meals and missed 4 meals a week, that comes out to $2,030 over the course of two years. That is a lot of money that could be going towards other things — books, tuition, savings, etc.
It is easy to see from these numbers that for a lot of college students, buying a full meal plan is not worth what we get out of it. And a university that already costs so much should not require us to spend money that we see no return from.
