Hungry for Quality

The Faculty Student Association robs students every day.

FSA's subdivision, Dining Services, clearly states on their frequently asked questions Web site that if you miss a meal, you don't receive a credit and can't make the meal up later. In other words, if you miss the bus and don't get a chance to use your meal plan in the dining halls, you're out of luck as far as dinner goes.

In spring of last year, FSA released a student poll asking students' opinions of the quality of Campus Dining and Shops. Several friends and I, all of whom are now Resident Advisors, returned the questionnaire with unfavorable answers.

Apparently enough unfavorable answers were returned to clue in FSA to the fact that we don't like our money being wasted just because we were too busy to make it to some meals on time.

New kinds of block dining plans were implemented. Saome allow you to catch up to nine meals per week, intending to help solve the problem of not being able to make it to some meals on time. Even then, however, if you missed a meal or equivalent at the end of the week, it wouldn't roll over.

Up until this point, your $6.55 equivalency at Putnam's would just disappear down the drain and into FSA's another-sucker-missed-one account. Actually, I don't know where our wasted money goes, because the issue isn't addressed on the website or even in the Campus Dining and Shops contract.

All we're told is that if you're too busy to make most meals in the dining halls, you have the option of getting a meal equivalent in Putnam's, or choosing a lesser meal plan which, we're told, isn't as good a value.

Something else also clearly stated to us in that Campus Dining and Shops contract is that only one meal credit may be used during the meal service period. This means you can swipe once per meal in Putnam's, and everything over your equivalency is deducted from dining dollars.

My twin brother, at Fredonia, can use more than one meal point if he happens to want more than $6.55 worth of food in one meal. If he wants something to drink with his sushi, he can swipe twice and still have equivalency left over to pick up a taco.

I hear they have more flexibility with when they're allowed to take their meals, too.

Why are UB students being restricted to only one point per meal period and having their accounts drained as their busy schedules keep them out of the dining halls?

FSA's main entr?(c)es are high in nutritional content, but their financial responses are pretty poor in informational content; the answers we're all given on the Web sites and brochures and contracts are all cheerful and laden with exclamation points.

Those optimistically delivered facts are pretty pessimistic in nature. Why don't our unused meals carry over into the next week, and why are freshmen required to buy a meal plan they might not end up using?

By the time we're upperclassmen, we've come to realize there are more dining options out there than Bert's and the Cellar. The majority of sophomores, juniors and seniors take a step back as far as meals per week, and tend to rely on real cash or dining dollars. But if we want the convenience of eating on campus, we tend to end up getting stuck.

I suggest more flexibility on FSA's part, and not in the form of the new "flex" block plan. What would please a lot of students, especially freshmen, is receiving a credit for a missed meal point and the option of swiping twice to receive double the equivalence for a meal.

Heck, I'd even settle for being partially reimbursed - if I miss dinner, why can't a few bucks be thrown onto my dining dollars?

When the only alternatives we're being given are clearly inferior and presented in a falsely cheerful way, I can't help but think we're being fed fluff: sugary answers and empty calories.