<p>nj2001mom- not at my alma mater! See below.</p>
<p>OP- this is part of your school. Your best bet is to live with it and ignore it for the next 1 1/2 years. It is part of the total university package and the rest of the package is why you are there. Don’t waste any more time or energy on something you can’t change. This is one of many ways schools manage to keep dorms solvent. You can spend your time comparing your school to others and you will find many similar (or even worse) along with some that seem to be able to charge less. You vented and now need to put it aside and enjoy your life. Do not let this keep you down, you have too many other things to do with your time.</p>
<p>I agree the dorms and food service are part of the choosing a college process. But- I wouldn’t make them the highest priority but definitely a tiebreaker.</p>
<p>nj2… UW-Madison has excellent food in Res Halls. Pay as you go- zero to whatever. Anyone can eat in their dining facilities but Res Halls dorm students pay less because part of their room contract covers the dining facilities as well as their dorms. Plus the academics are excellent.</p>
<p>I’m sorry. My daughter HATED the food she was required to get on her meal plan and it was so expensive. The dining environment was also terrible. Felt like a fast food restaurant with molded plastic chairs. She ended up buying food at the grocery store in addition to paying for the food plan. It was ridiculous.</p>
<p>If the food is really gross and not to your liking and is making you sick, perhaps you can get a medical note so that you can cook your own foods. I would meet with the dietician and then meet with the disabilities dean to discuss your situation. This really is a big problem for many kids required to eat on campus.</p>
<p>BTW- Some of her friends loved the food she hated and were very satisfied.</p>
<p>If not eating certain foods is actually a health issue, and not merely a matter of personal choice, then your best recourse would be the university disabilities office.</p>
<p>Lets put it this way. At least kids have a choice of schools based on food or choice of foods. Think about those ppl starving in Africa or refugee camps, never mind the concentration camps. Those ppl will LOVE to go to your school and have the food you are having.</p>
<p>In another country, I was drafted as army PFC, not only I was obligated to eat that bad food, but also for two days every month, I had to get up 3am in the morning to prep food for the whole battalion. It was a horrible experience and I lived through it. I have not been complaining about food ever since.</p>
<p>OP, if your school allowed you to opt out of the meal plan just because you don’t like the food (and despite your use of the term “dietary needs” you haven’t explained how this is about anything other than your personal preferences), they would have to let every student have this choice. And that wouldn’t be feasible, since cafeterias need a critical mass of meal plan participants to keep running and, assuming the food service is provided by an outside firm, as most are, to make an appropriate profit. So if was silly to think that you would be given special dispensation to opt out. A lot of college students hate their cafeterias. They survive, and you will, too.</p>
<p>At Cornell, for example, the only students who are required to enroll in meal plans are upperclassmen who choose to live in an area called West Campus, where the university has set up a house system that involves far more structured programming than is the case in typical dorms.</p>
<p>Everyone else – including freshmen – can do as they please. Students living in dorms can opt out of meal plans (my daughter did this her sophomore year). Students living off campus can opt in (one of my daughter’s apartment-mates did this when they were juniors. Students can get partial meal plans, buy individual meals at meal-plan facilities, or basically do pretty much anything else that they want to do and are willing to pay for.</p>
<p>Cornell gets away with this mostly because the dining hall food is quite good. Expensive, but good.</p>
<p>A friend’s daughter went to a small southern LAC where just about everything they served made her sick. She was allowed to drop the meal plan after her mother made a complete nuisance of herself and she had a doctor’s note stating that she could not eat that food for health reasons. Another friend has a daughter at a different school who is a celiac vegetarian and there are very few gluten free vegetarian options available. She could piece together a meal from a couple different venues (or occasionally from a couple different stations at the same venue), but it would take more time than she has to wait in different lines, and sometimes the venue that has the gluten free option that day isn’t the one her friends are going to. She’s gotten doctor’s notes, her mother has met with the food service folks, etc., and the school will not budge. She doesn’t have to eat the meals, but she has to pay for them. By forcing some or all of the school population onto the meal plan, schools cover overhead and can make the meal plans available.</p>
<p>Here’s an idea… If you brought a lot of AP credits with you as a freshman, you might be a Junior by hours after this year. My D was able to drop her required meal plan this year(Sophomore year) because she was technically a Junior by credit hours. This might not work at your school, but maybe it will. Best of luck. The food is really bad at her school also.</p>
<p>I think it’s important to note that most colleges are organized as not for profit corporations. So yes, they are businesses. But they are businesses that are trying to cover their costs, not make a killing on meal plans! It really bothers me when people assume that colleges are trying to get rich off of students. This is not true. They are trying to cover expenses so that they can provide a great college experience for students. In a time when kids are becoming increasingly picky about the food, facilities and atmosphere at a college, not to mention student faculty ratios, quality of academic departments, study abroad etc, it baffles me that people are still nit picking about things like food service costs. It’s part of what you signed up for! Please realize that colleges are competing to provide the best experience for you, yes WITHOUT MAKING profit. The shareholders, my friends, are the students who get the education, to experience the college that they chose, if you will…</p>
<p>Unfortunately, many Universities, especially larger ones, have contracted their food service out to private for-profit food service companies. This change happened recently at my Alma mater(and 2 children’s) school. It had a negative impact on the food choices, selections, and prices. The change was supposed to improve things for the students according to the administration, but that’s not how it worked out. </p>
<p>I don’t know the breakdown of what percentage of colleges still handle their own food service. That might be interesting to know.</p>
<p>Debbie, This can absolutely work both ways. The school my youngest will go to next year (ED) makes the distinction of your ‘social’ class standing apart from where you might land with earned credits (including AP, IB & DE). So you may have enough credits to be an academic Jr, but if the peer group you started with are Sophomores (who must live on campus and have a meal plan) then you are bound to that timeline. It is school specific.</p>
<p>I want to add that if OP keeps pressing this issue with her college’s administration, through an appeal or otherwise, she’s going to buy herself a reputation as a brat and a pain in the butt. If a truly pressing issue arises in the future, the powers that be will be less likely to be sympathetic to someone known to be a whiner. It’s important not to burn bridges. </p>
<p>I’ll also mention that OP’s comment that her family is low income is irrelevant–they knew what they were signing up for when she decided to attend this school, and if the meal costs were too high, a different decision should have been made.</p>
<p>Doctor’s note was what was required at my LAC to get out of eating in the dining halls or the Dining Co-ops<em>. In practice, this was needed for most non-senior students to get out of campus housing as we were required to spend all 4 years in residence unless we were approved for an exemption. Said exemption tended to be hard to come by unless one was a senior or were in situations where living in a dorm wasn’t viable for the student</em>*.</p>
<ul>
<li>Food and labor requirements in the Co-ops can cause serious issues for some students with disabilities and/or medical conditions.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Older non-traditionally aged students, married…especially with child(ren), etc. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This really depends on the circumstances behind OP’s issue with dorm food and/or the college itself.</p>
<p>Considering greater concerns over liability from ignoring of food allergies and mislabeling of items as “vegetarian/vegan”* in college cafeterias and the restaurant industry of which it is considered a subset, most college administrators are not as likely to be dismissive of this as a “brattish concern” as they would be 15+ years ago. </p>
<p>OP still needs to get a doctor’s note and discuss it with the disabilities office/dietician. </p>
<ul>
<li>Lawsuit against some restaurant chains for saying they used vegetable oil when they actually were found to have used meat-based oils in preparation of supposedly vegetarian fries.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dining hall experience/ food choices was a consideration, but not a large one for both the kids.
Youngest did move off campus sophomore year.
Outside of serious health concerns, i.e. Peanut allergy or the like, its pretty much a first world problem.
Get the smallest plan available. Supplement with nuts & seeds & raw fruit & veggies. Move off campus next year.</p>
<p>Because some schools offer different meal plans, students might feel they aren’t required to pay but it really isn’t optional (at least for the first year or two). You don’t get to discount your fees because you don’t check out library books, or you don’t use the gym or swim in the pools or go to the football games, and you don’t get charged double because you use the gym twice a day and pretty much have a reservation at a particular table in the library. You can’t negotiate every fee by how much you use that service. </p>
<p>You are actually lucky to have a choice of a cheaper meal plan and (maybe) different dorm set ups (single, suite, private bath) that have different prices. You are paying the minimum.</p>
<p>OP is probably stuck. But the thread serves a good purpose for families of hs seniors. </p>
<p>Food should not be the primary criteria for selecting a college, especially when mealplan will only be required freshman year. But it needs to be a consideration… even more so if there are dietary restrictions. Wherever possible during campus touring, we at lunch at the cafeteria. It gave a good sampling of food as well as the social vibe.</p>
<p>Requiring a meal plan doesn’t guarantee proper nutrition- not all will make good choices of available items. </p>
<p>UW manages to no longer require minimum food purchases (in my day we had a choice of 3 plans offering different numbers of $10 meal tickets- you could buy and sell them) by having good choices and making them available to everyone, not just dorm residents. A large public flagship they offer many different ethnic foods, some locally grown products, labeling of various dietary needs met etc. </p>
<p>Many schools that use a third party could request more from their vendors. The vendors will make a profit- pressure via a competitor or student input is required to change things. However, if changes increase the prices that will hurt those on a budget.</p>
<p>Small schools especially won’t have the economies of scale large schools do- eg providing 100 vegan portions along with more mainstream entrees at every meal. The days of three “all you can eat” meals but no other options should be gone. UW has options from around 7 am to after midnight I believe- with delivery (son once told me if I checked his food service account there may be 50 cent delivery fees). Add a dorm supplied minifridge and allow a microwave oven per room plus floor/dorm kitchens…What’s not to like? Students do get tired of dorm food, just like they get tired of even the best home cooking. UW can’t be the only school doing this. btw living in the public dorms is not required even for freshmen- they always fill up (and more dorm space is being built).</p>