The Cardinal Meal Plan is a reduced meal plan offered to fourth-years and Village Housing residents that includes seven meal swipes per week and 100 flex dollars for the total cost of $2,812, according to AVI Foodsystems’ website. Seven swipes per week is a little over 105 swipes per semester, which is how many swipes it was last year when they gave us a total amount instead of a certain number per week, according to AVI’s website last year. It can end up being more or less depending on whether you spend all your meal swipes each week and whether you’re here for breaks. But on average, it means that each meal swipe costs over $27.12. That is absurdly high.
If you were to pay out of pocket for a meal at the Rathskeller, Umami, or Azariah’s Café, it would cost less than $27. If you were to buy a guest swipe into Stevenson Dining Hall, it would cost less than $27. Most meals at most restaurants in the City of Oberlin would cost less than $27. It is hard to imagine anyone budgeting their food expenses such that every meal costs as much as it does when you are on the Cardinal Meal Plan.
It doesn’t make sense how this meal plan could be so expensive. It seems impossible that it actually costs AVI anywhere near $27 to make one meal for one student, especially considering that students on the other meal plans pay significantly less for each meal. The GoYeo Meal Plan is about $12 per meal, and the Gold Meal Plan is about $14.17. Therefore, it’s clearly not the cost of making the food.
If it’s not the cost of the food or making it, why are so many fourth-years being charged $27 for meal swipes? Where could that money possibly be going? What overhead could justify this? If you want to assume that AVI actually needs all of this money to run their dining halls, how? Economies of scale should mean that making food at a dining hall is cheaper per dish than at a restaurant.
Furthermore, even if this extra cost is truly explained by the cost of operating their kitchens and they truly do need to be paid that full amount by every fourth-year, that cannot account for the disparity between meal plans. There should be no reason that they couldn’t give us more meal swipes for the same cost when they are able to give all the other students meal swipes for less cost.
This price gouging becomes especially cruel because the meal plan is specifically for people who do not want to be dining on campus. It is for fourth-years and Village Housing residents who want to make most of their own meals at home. Why are these people being forced to pay proportionately way more than anyone else for a service they use and desire the least? Forcing us to pay so much for something we do not want comes off as extortionate.
It really feels like we should be allowed to fully opt out of a meal plan. You don’t have to be a die-hard supporter of the free market to think that it would be better to allow fourth-years to go to The Feve for dinner literally every day to get food that is cheaper and better than what they are required to buy now.
I understand that requiring students to be on a meal plan has its arguments. It helps ensure that all students are able to get food and that students who need help paying for food can get it. However, I do not accept that either of those reasons require that the meal plan be so expensive in the first place, and no justification would make it any less frustrating to have to take this horrible deal.
Frankly, the cost of this meal plan and the others makes me question the reasoning and motivation behind any of the pricing. This meal plan is, as mentioned, over $27 a day, but the others are about $48 a day, and even with the significantly more meal swipes at lower cost each, it does not feel like we should be spending $45 a day on food. Few do outside of college. Plus, how is the Gold Meal Plan somehow 100 fewer meal swipes than the GoYeo plan, but only 400 more flex dollars? A meal swipe cannot be worth four flex dollars.
From where I’m sitting, it seems like they are charging us what they want because they can. They can write down a number, and it could be $27 a meal or $45 a day. Or it could be more. Or it could be less. It doesn’t matter because we’ll pay it, and they know this. They know we’ll pay it because they require us to.
Perhaps you feel that conclusion is a bit far. Even so, the fact remains that the existing Cardinal Meal Plan is offensive to the senses and mathematically untenable. This sucks. Please make it cost less or give us more food. Thank you.
