This year Millersville University has decided to replace our declining meal plan with a Swipe based system instead. This new system has become a headache and despite costing the same as the previous meal plan system it is MUCH more restrictive, inefficient, and designed to cost us more money.

Students are forced to use their meager amount of flex money to pay for items such as all bottled drinks, feminine hygiene products, toilet paper, etc. This small amount of flex money can be easily depleted in a short amount of time for students that need to shop for these necessary items and for those students whose dietary choices don’t conform with MU Dining’s opinion on what constitutes a meal. With this problem Millersville has created, we students will essentially be scammed into having to put more money into our meal plans or Marauder Gold to make up for our lack of flex dollars.

Additionally, students can only purchase drinks as a part of their “combo” from soda machines, unless they choose to use their limited amount of flex dollars. This is not only restrictive as the soda/juice machines have far fewer options than the bottled drinks in the Anchor and Galley fridges, but also very inefficient as the machines take longer to use, which will cause long lines and much more traffic during certain hours of the day, and, as any MU student knows, the dispensers at these machines are not always filled/working or sometimes have the wrong product in them.

Many students often go to places like the Anchor for the express purpose of getting multiple products such as bottled drinks, but with this new system, students can only use their small amount of flex dollars for such purchases. This will be one of the contributing causes for why MU students run out of Flex money and will be forced to pay the school far more money so they can keep making these purchases.

The restrictions facing students in dining take their ugliest form in the combos. This needs to be fixed ASAP. Far too few options, little diversity, and many items aren’t even an option forcing you to again use flex for them; such as how burgers aren’t even a combo option in the Galley. Those with dietary restrictions that are vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, or people who have allergies or just want to have healthier choices, have but one option in the Galley and Anchor. 

There are also general problems such as lack of staff in each of the dining locations, poor hours such as at the Upper Deck opening at 10:30am and Starbucks closing at 3:00 pm, and certain foods previously present that haven’t been brought back.

If any of these problems relate to you please sign and share this form! Also, feel free to comment on some of your grievances with dining.

TL;DR:

Declining balance is gone and the new system is full of problems that need to be fixed such as:

• Bottled drinks don’t count on meal plan
• Not enough options for those with dietary restrictions
• Limited options for what counts as a meal
• Very little flex money
• Upperdeck not open early for breakfast
• Understaffed
• Students will be forced to pay more
• Little freedom with how we can spend our own money
• Bad hours

Please sign and share this petition!