After a year of presentations from Dining Services about expanding dining options, students returned to UR this fall to find their complete, healthy breakfast options had been limited, the value of their clubs decreased and two former well-utilized dining options, the Meliora Express and Common Ground Caf, are gone. In fact, of the planned changes, the only major thing that has come to fruition is a declining-only Starbucks, which often has brutal lines.
Students need to be able to eat breakfast at the Pit. That service needs to be reinstated immediately because the current breakfast options don’t cut it. Danforth and Hillside are out of the way for anyone who lives on the Residential Quad and too much of a time commitment for someone who wants a quick meal. Starbucks simply isn’t a breakfast option for anyone who doesn’t want pastries or plain bagels that can’t be toasted.
Dining has said that when there was breakfast at the Pit, very few people utilized it and having the breakfast options there took up too much space. But many students did eat breakfast, and others, if they didn’t eat it during the hours before noon, still ate the all day club options – bagels, cereal and 6 oz. yogurt.
But a 6 oz. yogurt cannot be clubbed anymore no matter what time it is bought – only a 4 oz. yogurt can be fit in a club. It is a similar situation with fountain drinks – no more 24 oz., just 16 oz. now. How is it that in one summer, the value of a club has decreased to the point where it cannot include a full-sized drink and yogurt even though it costs the same? The 170 Club Meal Plan costs $1969 per semester. When you take the $550 declining dollars out of that amount, you are left with $1419 worth of clubs, which comes out to $8.35 a club. Could that possibly be too little money for two more ounces of yogurt?
It was certainly an unpleasant surprise to see what happened to the meal plans and dining options over the summer. Surely no students thought that the club meal plan they signed on to would be worth less or that they wouldn’t be able to find a reasonable breakfast in a quick, convenient location.
