Dear Editor,

For a student living on campus, it is a requirement to purchase from a variety of different meal plans ranging in price from small to large: Platinum – $1,703, Gold – $1,376, Silver – $929 per quarter. A major issue with these meal plans is that if you don’t spend all the money at the end of each quarter, students will lose money because it is nonrefundable. Often students will try to spend the remainder of the money on their plan knowing that it’s a financial loss. This results in unnecessary purchases.

Strict policies in Eastern Washington University’s dining services are the result for these types of unnecessary spending and loss in finances. There needs to be change in these types of rules regarding student on campus meal plans. Again, without change to the present system, students will continue to lose nonrefundable funds or make sporadic purchases.

Simple solutions to this problem are creating a rollover system in which students will not lose much-needed funds over something as simple as meal counts. Students could also use the money that is being lost towards another EWU service such as Flex, so that the university wouldn’t be losing money. The best correction to the system is for Eastern to give students the option at the end of each quarter to choose how they would like to use their roll-over money. If these changes are made, a more productive use of students’ financial aid will be most beneficial. In the end, the students are happy even if the dining service suffers from a loss of expanded profit.

Sincerely,

Colin B. MacDonald

Jennifer C. Soule

Vincent R. Hamilton

William Y. Song