Freshmen returning from spring break will be able to sleep late, save money and eat well thanks to a change to the first-year meal plan.
Director of Dining Services Jim Wulforst said Thursday that a meal “equivalency” pilot program will go into effect at the Marketplace starting Monday, March 21. Under the new program, students who do not eat breakfast will be able to use the money prepaid through their meal plan for breakfast to buy lunch at the Marketplace. Any lunch exceeding the $4.85 cost of a breakfast will automatically be charged to students’ food points.
Wulforst said the program is dining services and Duke Student Government’s joint response to student criticisms of the meal plan. The current plan requires freshmen to pay for 12 meals each week—five breakfasts, five dinners and two weekend brunches—whether the students eat them or not. Wulforst said many students have complained that paying for breakfasts is a waste of money because they frequently skip or sleep through breakfast. On average, only about 700 freshmen eat breakfast at the Marketplace on a given day.
“If you ask the average student about their first-year dining experience, many of them are upset about the fact that they pay for breakfast and never go,” Wulforst said. “Even though we are open for almost five hours for breakfast, students have such late-night hours... they often miss the breakfast meal.”
In a letter to The Chronicle, DSG President Pasha Majdi said he also sees the new option as an answer to the long-term problem of uneaten breakfasts being charged to freshmen and their families.
“Testing this new system should alleviate the concerns students have been raising for years,” Majdi wrote. “I hope that students will see this procedural change as a victory for student interests and will better understand the process for changing our university to better accommodate our interests.”
Wulforst said DSG initially pushed for the elimination of the breakfast option altogether but dining services “wasn’t prepared to do that.” After brainstorming various alternatives, the equivalency program emerged as a financially viable and practical option. Implementing it in the middle of the year will also help students who are running out of food points and could use their untapped breakfast money to buy lunches, Wulforst explained.
Freshman Katie Corco called the change “amazing,” noting that it will help her buy food at lunchtime when she is normally searching for a cheap snack.
“I have class from 8:30 to 11:30, so unless I get up really early, I just never eat breakfast,” Corco said. “But I get out of class and I’m really hungry, so this is great.”
Freshman Rebecca Arnold also said she was happy about the change because trading breakfast for lunch will help her catch a few extra hours of sleep every morning. But Arnold said she wished the equivalency option extended to other vendors, particularly eateries on West Campus.
Junior Dave Gastwirth, co-president of Duke University Student Dining Advisory Committee, said he also hopes the option will eventually expand to include the Great Hall and help ensure that “every dollar spent on dining points will be used.”
Wulforst, however, said dining services cannot currently include other campus vendors as a part of the equivalency program because it could cause a “financial disaster” or create problems for employees by diverting revenue from the Marketplace.
“I don’t want to lay off employees because we have to shift schedules,” he said.
Wulforst stressed that the equivalency option is a only a “test” and will be evaluated at the end of the semester. Dining services will assess the program’s impact on staff operations, scheduling and financial resources before permanently implementing it in the meal plan.
Nonetheless, Wulforst said he expects the change to be successful—and only wishes it had happened sooner.
“I should have had it done last year, but I didn’t,” he said. “It’s time we really figure out how this is going to work and really model our scheduling and budget around this in the future.”
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