This petition is for Towson University to change the meal plan back to what it was last semester. 

This semester, Towson moved to a new company to provide food for students. This might be the cause of the new meal plan. When students were told to pick up meal plan for the semester, the meal plans all said “unlimited meals per semester”, but in reality, you would only get a certain amount of meals that you can use during the semester. "Meals" is what they called 'meal swipes' last year, so sense Towson did NOT clarify what these "unlimited meals" were, students would automatically assume it meant the same as last year since there was nothing to clarify what it meant. Not every place takes 'meals' and a lot of places will only take 'points' (a select currency amount that comes with each of the meal plans), so students are going to run out of points within the first 2 to 3 weeks of school since many places don't take 'meals', unlike last year, most, if not, all, places took 'meals'.

One place that offers these 'unlimited meal swipes' is the dining halls. If you go to the dining hall and use a meal swipe, you’ll most likely only get half of a plate of cold noodles and french fries. There’s not a lot of fresh food being made, and considering how much a meal swipe is worth it is not worth cold noodles and french fries. This happened to many students as well as me. I went there 3 times to research it and give it another try and there was not a good selection of food. I did not see any chefs cooking more food. I stayed there for an extra hour to observe, and no more food was laid out. This was well before closing time, so that was not why they didn't have food out. This is extremely disappointing because since that is one of the only places that you can use your 'meal swipes' and there’s barely any food, this means students are going hungry. Students cannot possibly get a good nights sleep, or learn properly if you are hungry.

This is absolutely no way to feed students.

This means that if a student has a 'meal swipe' that they want to use and they are vegetarian, they most likely will not be able to use a 'meal swipe' because all of the food places in the union only have one to three menu items that you can get with a 'meal swipe'. When I looked around, most of the food items contained meat. There might be one place you could get a vegetarian item at. If you are allergic to any of the ingredients, they will automatically charge you for your mail points which students only get a limited amount of. One place says you can get "3 toppings" and half of the topics is a upcharge.

Last semester, you could use meal swipes for almost anything, and if the total of the cost of a meal exceeded a certain amount of money, you could use two 'meal swipes' instead of one. This wouldn't really put a dent in the meal plan a student would choose. You could also do one 'meal swipe' and the rest on 'points' if it was only $1 more or something. This would make it, so you don’t have to use all of your 'dining points' by the end of two weeks. You could spread it out until the end of the semester if you wanted to.

As of right now, students are already running out of dining points and it’s the second week of school. This is because students are not able to get what they want or what they can eat at dining places.

When choosing what type of dining plan that students wanted this year before the semester started, students were told on the dining plans website that they could use the 'meal swipes' at most locations. When you go to those locations only about two items on the menu are actually offered by 'meal swipes' which means when students signed up for the 'meal plan', they are going to automatically assume that you could use a 'meal swipe' for whatever you want it on the menu because that was how it was advertised and how it was last year. It never said on the website that you could only use it for specific menu items, just that you could use them at those locations. This is a major part on why students are upset.

If put into perspective, students are paying thousands of dollars to get less than a couple hundred dollars worth of food.

Another thing that to note is this semester was Towson University over accepted students, so they are extremely long lines at the University union. So now, if students have a small break in between classes to get lunch, they’re not able to because there’s not enough time to get food. Lines can get to be over an hour long, and the shortest amount of time that I’ve stayed in a line was 45 minutes. Then, when you get up to the front of the line to order, a lot of places are out of the items that you can get with your 'tiger meal swipes'. This means you’re forced to use your dining points and students only have a limited amount of number of those.

I’ve talk to many Towson university students about this problem with the new meal plan and they all agree that this new meal plan is not okay. I’ve even spoken about it with people who work at different restaurants on campus and they all agree as well. The people who work at the restaurants in the union have no control over what is going on. This means it is up to Towson University to change the way that the new 'meal plan' is going to semester. I am not entirely sure why they decided to change the great meal plan of last year to what it is now, but it is very much not okay what they are doing to students with this new plan. Us Towson University students and staff need to come together to make this change. This is why I am making the petition. It is extremely distrustful what Towson University promoted as their 'meal plan' for this year because they were not clear about what you were getting, or what was going to happen this semester. By signing this petition, you are taking a great step into getting the word out to Towson University to change this 'meal plan' and for them to be more clear about what 'meal swipes' are used for so students don't feel they have been scammed out of their money.

Thank you so much for reading and supporting the change Towson University needs to change.