Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Deep into a recession, everyone is aware that we are living in times of economic turmoil. Everyone, that is, except for some members of this fine institution of higher learning we attend.
While paying for my sack lunch at The Studio yesterday, I was appalled to see that the number of my remaining meals on the cash register read 74. With only two weeks left of school, you do the math.
I caught on to this game early in the year and changed my meal plan to the lowest possible amount before starting the spring semester. Yet I still find myself with a hefty surplus of Mrs. E’s fine dining. If I cannot manage to use all my meals with the smallest meal plan, how much waste can we expect from students who overestimated the number of meals they needed? And most freshmen can attest to the difficulty of gauging their meal habits for the first year of college.
“I think we should get our money back, because a lot of people just spend all of their money at The Studio to get rid of it towards the end of the year,” said Marshall Dwyre, Ingalls freshman. “And that’s money that we could be spending in a more useful way.”
As much as I enjoy throwing money out the window, it is ridiculous that all unused meals and cuisine cash are simply “forfeited” at the end of the school year without any sort of refund or roll-over to the next year.
Another commodity wasted is the money that all students are given for printing. $8 a year for printing seems to be the result of poor budgeting. One can assume that most people in college have their own computers, and thus their own printers. If, say, 10,000 people don’t use their allotted printing, then that’s already $80,000 that goes to who knows where (the University coffers, maybe?).
There are also a few things included in the required campus fees that are not advantageous to all students, yet we are still forced to pay more than $800 for them each academic year. The rec center, for example is something every student pays for, yet not everybody uses. The rec is great when you’re living on campus, but I know from my own apartment search for next year that many complexes provide their own workout centers.
I’m not trying to bash everything that is incorporated into campus fees. I personally take advantage of most of them. But surely it’s possible to design a way for students to pay for only the things they actually use.
As a freshman, I am grateful that I began school this year and was able to get in on the tuition compact. It is a great stepping stone to help students save money. However, there is so much more that can be done to help students get an education without all the extra costs. I am proud to attend this University, but I know I’m not the only one paying for it all with student loans. I am attending college to get an education, not to waste $9 per meal for cafeteria food and to go to the rec.
— Wilson is a Hutchinson freshman in journalism and English.
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Wilson: Excessive meal plans, fees cause unfair waste
Welcome to KU!
Wilson: Excessive meal plans, fees cause unfair waste
I can totally relate. I have around 63 meals left.
Wilson: Excessive meal plans, fees cause unfair waste
I remember my freshman year when I had meals left on my card- they told me my meals would still be on there for the following semester. They definitely were not. I was quite surprised when I went to eat the next semester with a friend living in the dorms, to find out that not only did I not have the meals left, but the price for a "guest" went up from $7 to $9.
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