My name is Andrew Durie and I am in my freshman year at UVic studying geography. Since it’s my first year, UVic was kind enough to give me priority on a dorm room. This dorm room comes with a (mandatory) meal plan since no buildings have any space to cook, which is a big plus… so I thought.

You eat at this new dining hall that can seat 700 students, called “The Cove”. This is where all the first years come for their two carb filled meals a day, since that’s all they can afford. The mandatory meal plan costs an alarming $2,933.50 per semester (half the year). 

To break down this payment, $100.00 of it goes into our “flex fund”, which we can spend on things anywhere except the cove, such as the book store or CARSA.

Another $150.00 goes into the “capital improvement fund”, which is used to enhance the dining environment. So when a chair breaks, they will be able to use the thousands of dollars from this to fix it. 

You might think that the rest of the money goes into our meal plan, but you would be mistaken. We actually only get $1291.75 to spend on food. The other $1391.75 goes towards the “service delivery fee”, which is the money we pay to employ staff and perform maintenance.

For semester 1, we are at the university from September 4th (move in day) to December 21st (last day of exams). Which makes for 108 days on campus. Now, if you take that amount of money we have to spend on food ($1291.75) and divide it by 108, you get 11.96. Yes, you read that right, us students get $11.96 to spend on food per day.

UVic was nice enough to give us a 50% discount since we spent over double what we actually get on the meal plan as part of the "service delivery fee". Even with this discount the prices of food are still too high.

A stir-fry from the cove costs $12 ($6 on the meal plan), and I personally cannot live off two stir-fries a day. This is around the average price for a meal there, it isn’t enough food. Not only that, the portions are completely off. In one bowl of stir-fry, they fill it with noodles and veggies then sprinkle a little bit of your choice of protein on top.

Every meal I have eaten from the cove has been primarily carbs, so I will usually grab a protein shake to go along with it, the only problem is these protein shakes are $2.50 with the 50% discount. Recently I have been resorting to putting the protein shake in my bag so I can save the money for food, and still get a decently balanced meal.

Today I was confronted by a staff member who asked me if I had a drink in my bag, I said yes. The staff member was very understanding and I ended up paying for it, but while paying for it I asked him: “why do we get so little money to go towards food on the meal plan?”. He understood where I was coming from, I could tell he was sympathetic. He told me that he knows how hard it is for us and if we want change we need many people on board, it can’t just be me. That brings me to where I am now, sitting in my room typing this out, hoping that it isn’t just me that wants to see a change. If you read this far, sign the petition so the students can eat.