DeKALB | Students scarfing down food at the end of the week in an attempt to use up their meal plan dollars may rest easier knowing their unused dollars are still serving them — just not in the edible fashion.

“The leftover money is re-invested, as required by our bond covenants, into the buildings and equipment owned by Housing and Dining,” said Brien Martin, Associate Director of Business Affairs for Housing and Dining.

The money is put into reserve accounts, which are then used to purchase new equipment, or to refurbish old equipment, Martin said.

Reusing dining dollars

The reported amount of meal plan money left unspent by students last year was $2 million. The amount of money left unspent from August through mid-October last year has not significantly increased or decreased when compared to the amount left unspent during the same time frame this year, Martin said.

In addition to updating equipment in the dining halls with the unspent dining dollars, the money is used to replace tables and chairs, upgrade utilities such as electric and plumbing and replace carpeting or repainting the dining rooms, Martin said.

“Many of the things that Dining purchases with their reserve monies are rarely seen by students, because they happen in what is called ‘the back of the house,'” Martin said.

“In some respects, this is a good thing, because it means that we are able to replace and repair equipment and infrastructure without having it interfere with the student’s ability to eat a meal with us.”

Students living in the residence halls, like sophomore history major Jeremy Bauer, think the neglect of a rollover meal plan is unfair to students.

“I’m spending $55 a week, and what if, for a few days during that week, they’re serving food I don’t like?” Bauer said.

Sophomore English major Becky Wait sees the value of a roll-over meal plan.

“I understand why they do it,” Wait said regarding not rolling over meal plans. “But it would be nice if they rolled it over because some weeks when I go home I have about $20 left over and I wish I could get that back.”

Rollover won’t work

Although some students have expressed a desire to have a meal plan where the unspent money is rolled over from week to week, a rollover meal plan would cause difficulties in budgeting.

“It is a simple fact that our residents, for whatever reason, leave approximately $2 million in meal plan dollars unspent during the year,” Martin said. “We still have to assume, during our budgeting process, that every student will use every dollar they have on their meal plans. It would be irresponsible otherwise.”

The problem, Martin said, with having a rollover meal plan is that students will continue to skip meals as they do now.

“This would allow their meal plan rollovers to build up,” he said. “How many students can eat four or five hundred dollars worth of food in a week or less?”

Students would then have a large amount of leftover money at the end of the semester, and not have a way to spend it.

“That, to me, would be a larger problem than a student who ‘loses’ ten dollars a week under the current system,” Martin said.

Putting money back into dining

In addition to modeling budgeting after meal plans, management for the dining units adjust food inventories to account for meals skipped during the week. Management also takes into account unusual events occurring during a certain week in planning food inventories, said Ralph Chaplin, the Director of Residential Dining.

Dining Hall management uses recent historical meal counts from coinciding weeks in the previous year to forecast food consumption for a specific week, Chaplin said.

The historical data is utilized to determine the right amount of food to order. When too much food is ordered it is saved and used when those ingredients are needed in the future, Chaplin said.

Although it is not a recurring issue when too little food is ordered, Dining works with the other units on campus to fix the problem, Chaplin said.

In order to best serve the students’ needs, students can change their meal plans during the semester, Martin said.

“Students are allowed one ‘free’ meal plan upgrade or downgrade, but must pay a nominal fee if they wish to make additional changes,” Martin said.

To ensure a student is receiving the most effective meal plan, students should “start with the Gold meal plan, and then, if they find that they need more, upgrade to either the Platinum or Titanium plans,” Martin said.

Carlene Eck is a Campus Reporter for the Northern Star.