How many people could eat 1 meal a day for the rest of their lives? Or in the eyes of the University of San Francisco the rest of your college life? 

Upon first coming to USF and seeing the beautiful dining halls with astonishing views, tasty-looking food, and 2600 dining dollars in your account for the standard flexi-meal plan, students would think there was no way that food could be a problem here. However, after taking a deeper look at the dining policies of the school, one is left with a lot more frustration than satisfaction. I started to realize these issues when my dining dollars began to run out faster than expected. Being someone who didnt eat too much, and mainly just stuck to fruits and high protein meals I didnt think the money could leave the account so quickly. So I decided to investigate it.

One of the first problems I saw was the fact that the standard flexi-meal plan left you with about $20-$21 dollars a day to spend on food. Normally that would be fine, but not here at USF. An average meal at lone mountain cost $15, not including drinks or extras which range from $5-$7. Instantly that $20 for one day is turned into $20 for a meal. So again I ask, are you able to survive just off of one meal a day? 

If you're not into eating one meal a day, then maybe you just stick to pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. One of the least nutritious foods, but the cheapest to get. Even cheaper than a cup of fruit ($5 by the way). And if you're not into pizza and instead want to defy the system by eating a healthy 3 meals a day, then look for about $500-$700 dollars of food debt by the end of the semester, because that is what you'll have. 

This dining dollars system is not only unethical, but it’s not healthy for the students involved with high prices for quality meals, and inefficient budgeting. Students are just given the lump sum of cash at the start of the semester without any real guidance into how to break it down or save it. It’s almost as if the university wants you to spend as much as possible. Not only that, but the money that students don’t use by the end of the year turns into money that goes into the schools pockets. Not money towards your 50,000 average USF tuition, or even towards meals for the 20,000 people expected to be homeless in San Francisco this year alone. But to the school instead. 

Many schools around the country defeat this issue by adopting a swipes program, where students are granted a number of swipes per week and they use those swipes to enter into the cafe and eat freely until they exit. This is something that USF should seriously look into, especially if they want the students to have faith in their values such as “cura personalis: care for the whole person”, if you can’t care for their hunger than how can you care for them at all? That’s the question we have to ask the university.

We have to demand they lower food prices, allow the transferring of unused money either to other students, transferred towards next years tuition, or donated to the less fortunate. As well as look into the swipes program, to ensure that no student will go hungry by looking for a meal that cost less than $15 at a school charging 50,000 on average per year.