Premium meal plan fuels Dining Dollars, MOPS

It should come as no surprise to Tufts students that the Premium meal plan required for freshmen offers all-you-can-eat food at a cost that is more than many can stomach.

Students enrolled in other meal plans have likely also noticed that food from Merchants on Points (MOPS) is only available for delivery after 7 p.m. -- traditionally the hour when the dining halls closed.

According to Director of Dining Services Patti Lee Klos, the high cost of the Premium plan, coupled with the limited competition between the dining halls and MOPS, are designed to "support the entire network" of Dining Services.

"All of those monies do support all the services," Klos said. "We have quite a bit of fixed costs, which is why we've always limited where the money can go."

Freshmen, who are required to pay $2,110 per semester for the Premium plan, provide a large portion of the funding for establishments such as Brown and Brew and No Name Caf‚. While these eateries are open to all students, they are used primarily by students with meal plans grounded in Dining Dollars. The Premium plan allots freshmen 25 Dining Dollars.

Klos estimated that the average first year student uses the dining halls 14 times per week. During a 16-week semester, that means that those on the Premium plan pay $9.42 per meal. If students do not eat $9.42 worth of food in each meal, the remaining money goes to benefit establishments where their own plan is useless.

"There is no way I'm going to eat 400 meals in one semester," freshman Rina Sobel said. "I think I might have used 150 meals last semester, maybe not even that many. I just wish I could've taken some of those meals and either been able to give them to older friends so I can eat with them in the dining halls, or better yet turn them into points."

The Dining Dollars and MOPS programs "do absolutely nothing for freshmen," Sobel said.

The old Trio's Down the Alley in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy was heavily subsidized by undergraduate meal plans, according to Klos. "It didn't even come close to breaking even," she said.

For that reason, Dining Services changed Trio's format, menu, and name in order to make it more accessible to the undergraduates paying to keep it in business through their purchase of meal plans. The eatery is now known as No Name Caf‚.

The change brought larger crowds of undergraduates during the lunch and dinner hours, and many Fletcher students lost their usual gathering place -- a side effect Klos regrets.

"In response to financial concerns, I've displaced social concerns," Klos said. She said she would like to find a solution to allow students a quiet place to study while eating, and she hopes the proposed caf‚ in the Dranetz Tower of Tisch Library will fulfill that need.

MOPS hours and availability are also meant to keep money within the Dining Services budget, while at the same time providing students with options that are not available on campus. "We want the money to be used on services the University provides," Klos said.

For that reason, Dining Dollars are not valid at MOPS until after 7 p.m., and only then on delivery. According to Klos, MOPS are meant to complement rather than compete with Dining Services establishments. Dining Services also takes a 15 percent commission off all MOPS orders.

The Dining Services' budgetary system differs from those at other universities. The mandatory freshman meal system at Brandeis University, for example, usually costs about $1,900 per semester. While all first year students there are required to have a meal plan, they are allowed to choose among several options.

"We have extremely high participation," Brandeis Director of Dining Services Barb Laverdiere said. "Very few meals are not used ."

While Brandeis does not offer a comparable system to MOPS, it does provide a system called WhoCash, which functions in a similar manner to Tufts' Points Plus. WhoCash allows students to pay extra for points that can be used instead of cash at local restaurants. According to Laverdiere, Brandeis students with WhoCash have about 15 dining options, as opposed to the five MOPS options at Tufts.

Boston College, which is a larger school than Tufts, also has mandatory dining plans for first year students and for many students who live on campus. Like Brandeis, Boston College provides a variety of plans for their first years. Plans range in price from $1,875 to $2,875, and students are credited 50 percent of unused meal costs to their bursar bill at the end of the semester.