Bring Back Snacks!

Through recent changes in dining options, the Lehigh University administration has significantly impacted Lehigh student’s ability to access the food and drink that is essential to their studies.

With these new changes, students can use less than 20% of their meal plan on flexible food options, and while some won’t be impacted, many others have to make significant changes to their schedule and lifestyle, forcing Lehigh students to compromise between their health and their studies.

The changes in question are the removal of prepackaged food and drinks options from Hawks Nest that accompanied the opening of Clutch and Go, which does not accept meal swipes as a form of payment.

The effect of these changes is that students are not able to purchase packaged items, which are essential to student nutrition during long or late night study sessions among other cases, using their meal swipes, which make up the bulk of the value of our meal plans.

For example, for the 225 block plan students pay $3550 and get 225 meal credits and $300 in dining dollars. At $7/swipe, that works out to $1575 in meal credit value and $300 in dining dollars, or 84% meal credit (for a plan costing almost twice that..)

Given this, we, the Lehigh student body, assert that in order to have a fair and sustainable dining model, Lehigh University must bring back the old Hawks Nest snack offerings and/or accept meal swipes at Clutch and Go.