After Dining Services announced on April 15 that it would combine Points Plus and Dining Dollars into JumboCash next semester, Tufts Community Union (TCU) presidential candidates Elton Sykes and Duncan Pickard aired concerns that the innovation would leave out students who receive financial aid.
But fellow TCU presidential contender C.J. Mourning and administrators have responded with a clarification, saying that financial aid students will still receive Dining Dollars from the university after the change is implemented.
At Thursday's presidential debate, Sykes, the Senate's Administration and Policy Committee co-chair, and Pickard, the TCU parliamentarian, suggested that the new system would create a socioeconomic divide between students who can afford to purchase JumboCash and those who cannot.
"There are a lot of students that are going to be here that are socioeconomically disadvantaged," Pickard, a sophomore, said at the debate last week. "We need to really think about how this is going to impact students and involve students before we implement this change."
Mourning, the Senate Services Committee chair, had pushed for the merger and worked closely with Dining Services this school year to implement it.
Both Sykes, a junior, and Pickard worried that students on financial aid - who receive a predetermined amount of Dining Dollars as part of their standard meal plans - would face difficulties when they had to request a certain amount of JumboCash to add to their meals-only meal plans. Sykes collected 300 signatures in the past few days for a petition against the implementation of JumboCash.
But Director of Financial Aid Patricia Reilly and Director of Dining Services Patti Klos said that the new JumboCash plan will have no such effect. Klos said the food-specific Dining Dollars, which can be used exclusively to purchase food from on- and off-campus eateries, will in fact remain an option in meal plans, and students on financial aid will have the same access to this account that they have always had. Meanwhile, those who do not receive money from Tufts for board will be able to buy JumboCash or Dining Dollars as part of their meal plans, and will choose how much they buy.
"When we calculate financial aid, we assume that you're going to purchase a full meal plan from Tufts," Reilly said in reference to students whose financial aid packages include dining. "That means [we pay for] the most expensive meal plan there is." Next year, this meal plan, called the Premium Plan, will be valued at $2,545.
Students on financial aid will choose from Tufts' six meal plans, each of which includes a different number of meals.
Then, if they have not chosen the Premium Plan, they will be allowed to add any number of Dining Dollars they choose, as long as the value of their meal plan does not exceed $2,545. The difference between the amount they have spent on their dining plan and $2,545 will be deducted from their overall bill from Tufts. In this sense, everyone whose board is covered by financial aid receives a meal plan worth the amount of a Premium Plan.
If they wish to add JumboCash, they will have to do so with their own funds. This has been the case in the past for students on financial aid who wish to acquire Points Plus.
"The bottom line is that [JumboCash] won't be an issue for financial aid students," Reilly said. "Students can't buy unlimited JumboCash, but they can buy JumboCash up to the cost of a full meal plan" if they choose a plan other than the Premium with the check they receive from the university. This "is exactly the way it was in the old system with" Points Plus.
Next semester, students who do not rely on financial aid for their board will buy meals independently of Dining Dollars or JumboCash, and will have the option of adding either as they wish at a minimum of $100.
A lack of communication
While Pickard and Sykes now say they might not have understood the details of the JumboCash plan when they criticized it last Thurasday, the candidates said the confusion that they and many students feel about the issue demonstrates that Mourning did not communicate her project to the Senate and the student body well enough.
"If [Mourning and Klos] were to explain this better, if we were to have a discussion where they explained it, I don't think we'd be this confused," Sykes said.
"The fact that there is so much confusion really speaks to the fact that there wasn't any discussion of the program with the Senate or the student body," Pickard said. "C.J., being the senator who took on this project, really did a bad job serving student opinion and Senate opinion about exactly how this project should move forward."
He said this represented the divide between C.J. and himself. "That's the kind of thought process that I'm going to bring to the TCU presidency," he said.
Mourning, a sophomore, is running on a platform that she is the right candidate to bridge the communication gap between students, the Senate and the administration. But she acknowledged that she and Dining Services did not make all of the details of the JumboCash program clear.
"The reason for all this confusion is that the Web site hasn't been updated to explain the differences between the old meal plan and JumboCash. I understand students' concerns," she said. Klos told the Daily she had received e-mails in the last few days from students concerned that JumboCash would affect their financial aid.
But Mourning insists that she kept senators informed about the progress of the initiative.
"I talked about it with the Services Committee and then included it in my updates" to the entire Senate body, she said. She said senators had the opportunity to ask her questions and voice their concerns.
"When Patti Klos came to talk to the Senate last semester, she brought the issue up also, and the people who had issues raised their issues," Mourning added.
JumboCash "was something that students were surveyed on, and they said they wanted it," she said. "The student body voted in an overwhelming majority to see this happen. That was done last year, and it's been in discussion since last year on Senate whether or not this should happen. Senators have said time and time again that they wanted to see this happen."
Sykes: Why not simply cash?
Mourning rebutted another charge that Sykes made at last week's debate, in which he said having JumboCash would be pointless.
"What's the difference between having $450 on your card and $450 in your hand? There is no difference," Sykes said in the debate Thursday, arguing that it was pointless to use JumboCash as a kind of debit system.
But Mourning said that JumboCash was an easier and more economical alternative to paying with cash. JumboCash purchases at on-campus stores and eateries come free of tax, whereas transactions with regular cash are taxed.
"Because Tufts is a tax-free institution, you don't have to pay tax when using Tufts monies," Mourning said. "People are confused, and they are wondering why they should put money on the debit system if they have money in their pockets. But this is one of the added bonuses."
Giovanni Russonello contributed reporting to this article.
This article has been amended from its original version to correct for factual errors
