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Pepperdine students will have more flexibility with their meal plans this semester, following a revision of meal plan policy by housing and dining services to allow unused points to roll over.
Unlike in previous years, students who have meal points left over at the end of the fall semester will be able to use them in the spring. Also, points still unused at the end of the school year will be automatically contributed to charity. Points cannot be carried over for use during summer school courses.
“We had known that this was a concern for students,” said Jim Brock, director of housing for the university. “Last year SGA came to us and talked specifically about [losing unused meal points], so based on that discussion with SGA, [Dining Services Area General Manager] Gene Perkins and I made the decision to allow points to roll over.”
Brock added that students’ spring semester point allotment will remain the same, but with the rollover-points added to the tally. For example, if a student has a 500 point per semester plan, but had 200 points remaining at the end of the fall semester, they would start the next semester with 700 points.
For students who may have unused points but will not be enrolled the following semester, they will not be refunded for the remaining fall points.
Another change that SGA approached Brock with was automatically applying points that are left over to charity. In past years, different groups and organizations on campus have started grassroots campaigns at the end of the academic year to try to get students to volunteer their points. Now they won’t have to, with dining services taking care of it for them.
“Dining services will take the number of points that were left over in the system,” Brock said. “They have a formula that they use, where it’s not a dollar-per-point system, but they take a percentage of the points left over and convert it to bulk food.”
Brock said university administration and SGA are in the process of determining what charity to partner with.
“We’re talking about buying bulk cases of food or something like that that can be donated to charity,” he said. “We will be working with SGA throughout the year to determine what charity to work with.”
Pepperdine junior Carter Blanton signed up for a 250-point meal plan, even though he is living in the Malibu Canyon Apartments.
“I eat on campus whenever I can, which is usually just lunch,” Blanton said. “As soon as I heard that [the meal points] roll over now, I knew that it would be a good idea to sign up for a plan.”
He said he was pleasantly surprised to learn that unused points would help contribute to charity.
“If I’m not feeding myself, I’m feeding someone else,” he said.
Brock said it is students like Blanton who made the change possible in the first place.
“Almost all of the changes in Dining Services have taken place because of student input,” Perkins said in an e-mail to students at the start of the semester. “We value your suggestions, recommendations and concerns.”
Brock said he is hopeful that the changes will demonstrate to students that their opinions do not fall on deaf ears.
“Dining Services and our office are really eager to hear from students,” he said. “A lot of the changes that we’ve implemented have been due to student feedback. The last thing we want is for students to sit back and think, ‘I’m not going to express my opinion because what is going to change?’ Well, a lot can change.”
Submitted 09-21-2006
MALIBU, CA
