Letter to the editor

Student upset about dining services policy over Easter

This past weekend I found myself one of several students staying on campus as my family doesn’t celebrate Easter.

I found out on Thursday, via one of those silly little napkin holder flyers in Riverside Commons that nobody actually reads, that to eat over the weekend, starting with dinner on Friday, I would need to buy a five dollar additional meal plan.

No big deal, right?

Except the deadline to sign up for said meal plan was Wednesday night. I couldn’t exactly afford to go buy food for the weekend, so I had to rely on leftovers and my very kind boyfriend.

I see a few significant flaws.

First of all, students who don’t celebrate Easter were forced to either go home anyway, pay five dollars, or scrounge such as myself. Second of all, what about those students who couldn’t go home until Saturday?

They had to pay five dollars if they wanted to eat on Friday night.

Finally, and probably the biggest flaw… I would have begrudgingly paid said cash had I known I had to do so to eat.

However, as I’ve said, I didn’t find out I needed to do so until AFTER the deadline to sign up.

I’ve asked many of my friends who found themselves in a similar situation and also found themselves uninformed.

Would it have really been that hard to send an e-mail out? Apparently not, considering the several irrelevant e-mails I receive from the school each week.

Maybe I’m blowing the situation out of proportion, but had I not been as lucky as I was, I would have gone almost entirely hungry for two and a half days.

Not cool, Dining Services. Not cool.

Patrick Grafing
Student