Living from swipe to swipe

Published: September 11, 2008, 3:00 pm ET


Richmond College ’10

After returning to campus this fall from a semester abroad, I noticed there have been several changes – most for the better. Freeman was renovated and turned into a women’s dorm, Gray Court was also renovated and no longer houses freshmen boys. Something I wasn’t so excited about was finding out about the change in meal swipe policy; a change that was made rather discretely and without the support or knowledge of the student body.

The lack of publicity ensured that students would have to find out about this modification through trial and error or word of mouth. Slowly students have begun to realize that, once again, we are being ripped off. Despite the fact that room and board just increased by 13.9 percent, Dee Hardy, director of food and auxiliary services, claims that rising food prices have caused them to find a more creative way to steal our money. I always thought that the University of Richmond was a non-profit organization.

Have you been to the Pier yet and had your meal go over one swipe’s worth? Then, if you decide to go ahead and use two swipes and get a little more food for later you can say goodbye to eating for the next four hours. Dee Hardy’s suggestion is just to waste all your dining dollars on that so you can’t eat at the Cellar or 8:15 anymore. Remember when Richmond was ranked in the top 10 most fit colleges? Maybe they’re just worried that we’re eating too much and would rather that we spend our time in the gym. Well, if we lose that ranking maybe we can be in the top 10 for eating disorders now since everyone has to plan their days around the meal times to make sure they can use their swipes.

So what are we going to do? How about a good old-fashioned sit-in? A hunger strike is always an option and we can always fall back on a simple petition. Let me know. Now start calling the alumni/ae (if you can get service).

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  • JD Murphy

    What an amazingly vague and uninformative article. As an alumni I am not familiar with any changes to the meal plan system and thus have no basis whatsoever for understanding the assertions made in this article. If at all possible, please expand this article to include even a line or two of fact (perhaps a description of the new system, say?) rather than simply a string of complaints. I totally empathize with any grievances against dining services so this is something I am actually interested in learning more about.