Doing away with the punch-a-day: justifying the meal plan changes
This is the Our View, prepared by the Editorial Board and should be considered as the institutional voice of The Record.
This year, St. Ben’s and St. John’s made a significant change to the continuous meal plan (more commonly known as the “unlimited plan”).
While students are still able to swipe into the Refectory or Gorecki as frequently as their heart desires and receive $150 flex bucks, the plan now only allows 60 punches per semester–last year, it was one punch per day.
Despite this seemingly less bang-for-your-buck change, prices have still gone up (per usual, to account for inflation and increased food costs): CSB students will pay $3,090 this semester ($3,032 last semester), while SJU students will pay $3,180 ($3,116 last semester).
At face value, this seems like a bad idea and a raw deal for students. Indeed, some students have been vocal about this displeasure with the new continuous plan–particularly Johnnies, who seemingly use the extra punch more frequently or as an additional meal late at night. (As the only Johnnie on this Editorial Board will tell you, he ate a full Sexton sub every night freshman year and promptly gained a much needed 20 lbs.)
We agreed with those people. This Our View was going to be a “why the heck would they take away the punch-a-day part of the continuous plan” (but in much nicer words of course), until we reached out to CSB and SJU dining and received an incredibly informative response from Carmen Welinski, director of Culinary Services at CSB, and Tony Finnestad, SJU Dining executive director.
Because of that email, we’re changing our tune, and we want to explain why so that students can gain a better understanding of the behind-the-scenes decision-making. Here’s why the continuous meal changed from one punch a day to 60 per semester and why it makes sense.
First, a number of factors determine meal plan offerings. While meal plan price increases were set at 2%, the cost of food and labor is projected to increase by 7% and 7-12%, respectively. Both CSB and SJU dining services are still experiencing staffing shortages, which affects everything from dining hours to station availability and much more.
Second, how many students actually utilized the punch-a-day feature consistently anyway? According to the email from Welinski and Finnestad, not many. Sixty punches is more than the average person used in past years, even looking at pre-COVID numbers. Although we are more than halfway through this semester, only about 21% of the punches have been used by CSB students on the continuous plan. (Data for SJU students was not provided, although common knowledge would say the number is higher than CSB’s but probably not drastically).
Third, the decision was made, at least to a certain extent, with student feedback in mind. While the new plan allots less punches, it provides greater flexibility–students can now use more than one punch a day. The change is also intended to keep costs down, and it’s our hope that this actually happens year after year.
The new continuous plan is certainly not perfect. It would be nice for CSB and SJU to get on the same page when it comes to the price, considering that all students have the same four dining options (Gorecki, McGlynn’s, the Reef and Sexton). Students should have been given information about the change, rather than having to figure it out themselves from the description and looking at their GET Mobile account.
However, on the whole, this situation is a good example of something that, at face value, looks negative, but when actually given background information on, makes a lot of sense. We understand that there will still be people upset by this change (first-year Landon included). But the numbers justify the switch to 60 punches per semester, and hopefully our explanation above shows that.
Sensible changes are good for CSB+SJU, and so far this year, the administration has shown it is willing to listen to and incorporate student feedback. After the pandemic years of out-of-necessity “this is the deal” administrating, much to the annoyance of students, it’s been fun to see innovative changes: completion of the Seton Apartments, the Mini Mart at Sexton and the relocation of the Clemens Perk. A tip of the cap from us, with the hope that it will continue long into the future.
Last, and most importantly, thank your dining staff. Not only do they work hard to ensure that you have good food each and every day, but they are also vital members of our CSB+SJU community who deserve appreciation and respect. Go out of your way to show them kindness.