Neva Derewetzky
As college students, we are at a constant war with our wallets. Whatever your spending practices, there is one certain fact. You need to budget your meal plan even if it is made of prepaid money. At Wooster, we are not given the option to forego our meal plans for the immense possibilities of the kitchen, so instead we have three options with varying degrees of meal swipes and flex. A big problem with our meal plans is the lack of flexibility. Recently, the College has allowed students to use up to $7.50 in flex to spend as a meal swipe as a way of granting more flexibility in our meals.
Mom’s Truck Stop, now renamed Mom’s Food and Drink for the 2019-20 school year, has always been a cheaper option for students to spend their flex on. And, with the recent addition of using $7.50 in flex to equal one meal swipe, Mom’s has become more popular, especially during lunch. Coming back from the summer, myself along with other students noticed the prices have been raised. This in itself is not new to the College. We as students are more than familiar with raises in prices, but I argue that this disrupts the balance of the meal plan in particular consideration of Mom’s as a dining option.
Assuming one would come to Mom’s during the daytime swipe hours to have a meal more often than just a snack, then it can be assumed that people are going to order more than just a hamburger. They are going to want not just an entrée but sides as well. Mom’s offers the option to “make any entrée a combo by adding a fountain drink + chips, fries or a side salad” for $2.79. I would assume that for an entrée with a side and a drink, that could be considered a meal because, if we were spending our meal swipes in an actual dining hall, then more often than not people are getting more than just a spicy chicken sandwich without a drink.
To equal $7.50 and be a combo, an entrée would have to cost less than $4.71. There are 19 items on the menu that are considered an entrée that can no longer be made a combo without going over the allotted $7.50 for a meal swipe. Not including drinks and add-ons there are 42 items at Mom’s. This means that nearly half of those items cannot be made a combo without going over the $7.50 limit.
Consider the prices of cheese-based sides. Mozzarella sticks, once $4.79 are now $5.99 and the newly added cheese curds in replacement of the well-loved mac and cheese bites are $5.79. Even if inflation is the reason for the price increase, this is not the case. Assuming the United States has a determined economic inflation of 1.5-2.0 percent each year, then the median of that, 1.75 percent would only raise the prices of mozzarella sticks from $4.79 to $4.87.
Was the plan all along to have us run out of our meal plans faster so that we have to dip into COW debit or our own wallets? That sounds more like the ramblings of a burnt out senior. If we raised the amount of flex or meal swipes allotted in our plans, we would only be raising the amount we pay in total. It makes me ask the question: how do these price raises benefit the College community? Is it going to a cause that can help improve the campus, the people who work here or the students? If so, I would love to know and I would support the increase in price.
Upon further investigation, I reached out to Marjorie Shamp, director of campus dining. She very kindly sent me a response. Prices fluctuate each year, especially on “commodity items like produce,” and when prices raise “our team looks for ways to either change suppliers, eliminate the ingredient temporarily or ride out the increase.” As a solution, “Each summer, the Campus Dining management team reviews food cost on all menu items and determines where price increases are necessary… The prices that we charge are not tied to any forces, other than food cost.” If this is the case, it is out of the control of the Greater Forces of Wooster. I suggest rather than doing what I just did and figuring out the general percentage of inflation based on the prices of mozzarella sticks, we meet in the middle. Raise the flex allowance for a swipe. Instead of $7.50 for swipe equivalency, why not raise it to $8.50 or even $9.00? Even with that, a combo would not be possible with all entrée options at Mom’s, but there would be more room for flexibility in our meal choices not just at Mom’s but at other dining options on campus. Until then, I respectfully boycott the raise in the price of mozzarella sticks.