Meal plans in the residence halls are really sketchy

Erin McQuinn

Playing with Words

The alternative meal options at the residence halls don't add up. This is a great concern to me since I can no longer bring myself to eat in the cafeteria. I think it's the smell. The smell of the cafeteria reminds me of the time during first semester when I got sick from eating something that I thought resembled some sort of peeled potato. But there was no way that this was any sort of natural vegetable from the earth. I should've known by the lime-tinted water that it was chillin' in - but I was in a hurry. Ever since then, I can't bring myself to enter that room of trays and cheap silverware, because I can start to smell that nasty-potato smell. It makes my stomach turn just thinking about it. So I must resort to the alternative meal venue - the basement kitchen with the extended hours.

At the start of second semester, I switched from the "Any 13" to the "135 meals." (By the way, is there anyone who actually eats all 13 meals a week?) But after eating several expensive tomato slices, I started thinking about the math behind it.

Okay, there are approximately 16 weeks in a term - we are automatically given the Any 13 meal plan and if you want no meal plan, they'll credit you $540 to your Entrée plus account. So that means that we are allotted $2.60 for every meal - right? No, you're pretty much getting screwed over if you choose to take the "Points only" option. Now the "135 Meals" plan gives you 135 meals (hence the name) and $135 in your entrée plus account. All unused meals are credited back to your account at the rate of $2 per meal. Not $2.60, just $2. But here comes the major (more than 60 cents) problem. It doesn't make sense that it costs $7 or $8 for an outside person (without a meal plan) to eat at the dining hall. How can they cite such a huge difference in price? How can the same tray be worth that much more? Is it to punish the outside people for being so weird that they actually want to eat at a dining hall? How can the Entrée office put the price tag of $7 or $8 on entering the cafeteria, but then only credit us $2 for meals that we don't eat? It just doesn't make sense to me. Is the cafeteria that magical of a place that it warrants a $7 or $8 entrance fee?

Now there is the story of the alternative meal venues where you can use meal credits from missed meals and Entrée plus. At lunchtime you can get something "worth" $2.60 and at dinner you can get something "worth" $3.75. Now if you make these numbers the actual value of a University meal, the entrée office is allotting you $669.60 per semester. But if you denied the meal service, they will only credit you $540 per semester. So again, why the price difference? Is there just some person in an office making up random numbers? There seems to be absolutely no standard price for the privilege of entering the cafeteria. And it brings back the question, if the price of dinner in the basement is $3.75, why are we only getting $2 back for meals that we don't eat?

Oh yes, and then there's the condiments. If you want to throw some veggies on your basement fried food - it'll cost you. It'll cost you ten cents for onions or mushrooms, a quarter for a tomato slice and 35 cents for cheese. However, if you had used your "mystery amount" meal credit in the cafeteria like they wanted you to, you could've walked out with five tomatoes. Sure, a quarter isn't a lot, but it's starting to annoy me. It seems like some sort of condiment punishment for the people who have late classes or can't stand the smell of the cafeteria. The person making up the random numbers in the Entrée office is trying to slowly mentally break us down until we are all zombies eating Salisbury steak every day in the "standard" cafeteria.

Just about the only good thing that the Entrée office has done is making it possible to get a pint of Ben and Jerry's for a meal credit. But then they put the time constraint of a 10 p.m. curfew - no meal credit usage after 10. Now that's just plain cruel. Everyone knows that the worst ice cream/fro yo craving hits late at night. It was bad enough that they were ripping us off, but the ten o'clock ice cream curfew is where I draw the line. Something must be done...

Being tough on crime has long been a stalwart of successful politicians. Of course, this makes sense: Siding with criminals seems to be a great political faux paus, and reasonably so and the messy interplay between politics and law enforcement has driven.

- Erin McQuinn can be reached via

e-mail at emcquinn@umich.edu.