On Nov. 8, members of the Student Union, University administrators and representatives from Sodexo met to discuss a proposal for meal plan reform to be implemented at the start of the next academic year. According to Jay DeGioia, Brandeis' resident district manager for Dining Services, he called the meeting in response to student feedback that was garnered during the request for proposal process that took place last year.

At the meeting, Sodexo proposed several ideas for new types of meal plans, according to the Senate chair of the Dining Committee, Class of 2017 Senator David Heaton. In an email to the Justice, DeGioia said that "the meal plans proposed are a direct result of what [Sodexo was] asked to deliver from the direction in the sales proposal" which the University gave out during the request for proposal process. Instead of meals, the potential new system would introduce the use of "swipes" that students would use at Sherman Dining Hall or Usdan Caf?(c), which will be converted over the summer into a resident dining hall facility comparable to Sherman, DeGioia said in an interview with the Justice.

The name "swipes" denotes how they differ from meals: these "swipes" would not be limited by meal periods such as lunch and dinner, or disappear at the end of the week, but would be available for unrestricted use throughout the semester, Heaton said in an interview with the Justice. Proposed meal plans would provide students with options similar to those currently in place, with suggested plans that allow for the purchase of many swipes with a limited number of points, or fewer swipes but a larger amount of points, according to Heaton.

One proposed plan would vary vastly from any existing plans, according to DeGioia, who mentioned the implementation of an "all-access" plan that would give students an unlimited number of swipes for the entire semester, but very few points to use at retail locations such as Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks. The University very likely will not decide to allow the use of meals at retail locations such as the Hoot Market due to the added expense and reduced control that DeGioia predicts will result when students have the ability to use unlimited meals at locations with regulated prices.

Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel said in an interview with the Justice that the request for proposal catalyzed the Nov. 8 discussion over reforming meal plans at Brandeis. Students expressed dissatisfaction with their meal plans in focus groups during the request for proposal process, according to Flagel, with one major point being frustration over a perceived loss of value through meal equivalency at the University's retail dining locations. Student dissatisfaction regarding meal plans has been ongoing however, according to Flagel, who said that negative student feedback regarding dining began before his arrival at the University.

Student Union President Ricky Rosen '14 said in an interview with the Justice that this change would ease some of this financial loss students experience with their current meal plans by eliminating the current system of equivocating meals to a dollar value for use at retail dining locations. Rosen said The Stein acts as a good example of this loss. At The Stein students can use a meal to pay for only five dollars worth of food, whereas a meal at Sherman Dining Hall buys a dinner worth of over 10 dollars retail.

"At the end of the day, because the ratio [of money spent on meal plans to value purchased by meals and points] is unbalanced, students aren't getting the most for their money. So we're looking at removing those components and just having meal swipes at Sherman and Usdan," instead of the current system where students use roughly equivocated meals at retail dining locations," said Rosen. Sodexo, the Student Union and University administrators aim to implement new meal plans by the beginning of the fall 2014 semester, according to Rosen.

The introduction of swipes to replace meals made up only part of the proposal Sodexo brought to its meeting with University representatives. "Something [the University is] considering right now is having all on-campus housing students be on a meal plan," Rosen told the Justice.

This proposal change would require all residential students to purchase some sort of meal plan, regardless of where on campus they live, said Rosen. According to Flagel, this idea also came about during the RFP process last year, during which the University hired consultant Ray E. Petit, president and founder of Petit Consulting, LLC, a company that, according to its website, provides "planning advice to foodservice and hospitality clients." According to Flagel, in Petit's analysis of the University, he called Brandeis "an outlier compared to other institutions" in having "only portions of the residential population on meal plans."

DeGioia said that such a change could only benefit students in regard to on-campus dining: "the more participants, the better the quality, the better the offerings, the more offerings." Flagel also said that he felt such a change would have a positive effect, telling the Justice that his "perception [is] that this was a direction that would really heighten the student experience."

Student feedback will largely impact the decision of whether all residential students will need to purchase meal plans, according to Rosen, who said that such an option might make on-campus housing less desirable. By increasing the quality of the food and the pricing, however, Rosen opined that "students will be more willing to have some sort of uniform requirement for a meal plan." In any case, Rosen said that such a drastic change in whom the University requires to purchase a meal plan would not be implemented until 2015 or 2016.

Another idea that the University wishes to consider would require all enrolled, undergraduate students to purchase some sort of meal plan, regardless of whether or not they live on campus. However, Rosen said that such a requirement has a "very small chance" of being enacted.

"Increasingly, other institutions are including some level of plan requirement even for off-campus students. That wasn't met with as much enthusiasm by our students who were involved in discussing at the different forums [during the RFP process], so that hasn't been envisioned [as of yet]," said Flagel. Instead, the University has a goal to make the food on campus so good that off-campus students will be more interested in being on meal plans, according to Rosen.

"Something we're considering is having a much cheaper option for off campus students which would include a limited amount of dining dollars and meal swipes so that way they're able to eat [on campus] a few times a week, but they're not bound to eating on campus every day" Rosen said.

Flagel, Rosen and DeGioia all said that student feedback will make up an important part of the decision-making process moving forward. Decisions regarding major changes to meal plans considered student feedback from past years, some even from students who have since graduated, according to Flagel. The meal plan ideas proposed at the Nov. 8 meeting did not consider any feedback received since Sodexo became Brandeis' food service provider, according to DeGioia, but only feedback received by Sodexo during the RFP process last year. Since the University Board of Trustees must approve a final proposal for meal plan options before students sign up for housing and pick their meal plans for the upcoming academic year, "time begins to work against [new] feedback inclusion for decisions this year," said Flagel in an email to the Justice. Therefore updated feedback in reaction to Sodexo's proposals will necessarily take a back seat to older student feedback, "but can be revisited as we move into the next [annual] cycle of meal plan development."

"We need to, as we move forward, be looking at our student satisfaction levels and be looking at our perception of value levels and make sure that this is creating positive progress on all of those fronts for our students," Flagel wrote.

According to Rosen, the Student Union will be sending out a survey to students in the next few weeks to ask students how they feel about meal equivalency and unlimited swipes, how many meal plan options they want to have and how they would feel about requiring all students to have meal plans. After receiving that data, the Student Union, University administrators and Sodexo plan to meet again to discuss what changes, if any, will be made before submitting the proposals to the University Board of Trustees. They likely will not enact any significant changes to the current proposal, however; in an email to the Justice, DeGioia said that though Sodexo retains interest in the results of the upcoming survey, the feedback "may only affect minor changes for next fall, but will definitely be considered for the future."

The ultimate goals of the University and Sodexo, according to Flagel and DeGioia, respectively, are to cater to students' needs and involve them in the decision-making process to come up with a system that pleases the majority, providing more flexibility and a more positive dining experience.

"There's lots of other pieces of student input that we want to try to collect. I think it's always a challenge but at some point decisions have to get made and not everyone's going to be 100 percent satisfied with any decision. It's not possible," Flagel said, adding, "It's Brandeis. I'm sure there's always going to be a countervailent [sic] position somewhere."