The points problem: As the Senate prepares to announce a new restaurant on points, the Daily takes an investigative look at the MOPS system. This is the first of three articles.
Stand outside a Tufts dorm for 10 minutes between 7 p.m. and midnight and you're bound to watch at least one restaurant delivery driver pull up to bring food to a student. And that food will most likely be a pizza, Italian sub or pasta dish.
As students await the results of the latest Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate survey, which will dictate what local restaurant joins Tufts' Merchants on Points (MOPs) system, questions linger about why only six restaurants can accept points, and why most of those restaurants offer such similar food.
"This is an issue whose time has come," Director of Dining Services Patti Klos said.
Students are asking for more restaurants and more variety, Klos said, and Dining Services is working with the Senate's Services Committee to formulate a response to popular demand.
Services Committee Chair C.J. Mourning, a sophomore, said revamping the MOPs system is her top priority.
"It's my baby project," she said. "It's the one project that I am very dedicated [to] seeing to fruition."
But expanding the MOPs system, which allows students to use their Dining Dollars and Points Plus to order delivery from local restaurants, will not be a simple process.
Among other issues, Dining Services has to manually process all receipts from orders on points, and Klos is concerned that adding another restaurant would cause too much of a strain.
But perhaps the most important factor inhibiting change is that under the current system, the more students use their Dining Dollars at off-campus eateries, the less money Dining Services earns.
In this way, Dining Services is in a lose-lose situation, caught between students' growing demands for more off-campus options and the need to economically sustain itself.
As a self-operated auxiliary at the university, Dining Services must make enough money each semester to support itself and pay its employees. When students pay restaurants with Dining Dollars, which are purchased as part of meal plans, they hand over some of Dining Services' key earnings to outside businesses.
"Dining Dollars are part of the core monies that Dining [Services] uses to operate its 11 establishments in the Tufts community, and we do need a certain base to maintain all those facilities," Klos said.
"When the money can go off campus, there is potential revenue that [we] might have earned that's now going elsewhere. So I'm reluctant to add more opportunities for core dining money to go away," she continued. "It's like money is leaving the account."
The primary way that Dining Services is currently working to solve this conflict is to remodel the Dining Dollars and Points Plus systems. Points Plus are more widely applicable funds that can be used to pay for laundry, overdue library fees and other expenses, as well as every expense covered by Dining Dollars.
Klos has suggested that the university work to eliminate Dining Dollars and rely solely on Points Plus. This would give Dining Services a reason to look elsewhere for revenue, and it would mean that when students use points to pay for off-campus meals, they would not be giving away money that Dining Services had counted on earning.
But this change would require a significant restructuring of Dining Services' operations, which may hinder attempts to effect the transformation.
"The university likes predictability," Klos said. "Most businesses like to be able to predict how things are going to go.
"If we were to make this change ... it could impact our revenue," she continued. "Let's say we see 100 [Dining Dollars] a day [being spent] in the Commons. ... If now that 100 dollars is actually Points [Plus], maybe we'd still see that 100 dollars a day, or maybe we'd see 70 a day."
One positive effect that this change would have for students is that it would give them "more flexibility in how much money is used," Klos said. Students would be able to more freely decide how many dollars they invest, whereas now a set number of Dining Dollars comes standard with meal plans.
Also, Points Plus carry over from semester to semester but Dining Dollars expire at the end of each academic year.
Students feel that blending Dining Dollars and Points Plus would also make life easier in other ways.
"It's inconvenient that they're not the same, because then you have to track both separately," senior Radha Patel said.
Still, this campaign remains in the planning stages, and Dining Services would have to devise a way to compensate for the money lost from its meal-plan sales after eliminating Dining Dollars.
Because Dining Services is an auxiliary, it must receive approval of any planned changes from the administration via Scott Sahagian and Leah McIntosh, executive associate dean of the School of Engineering and executive administrative dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, respectively.
Sahagian emphasized the need to move slowly in implementing changes.
"We tend to take a very serious approach to make sure our students get the best of what we can afford," he said. "It's a tricky arena in some ways."
