Sources

"College Student Debt Statistics - College Student Credit Card." College Student Credit Card - Low APR Student Cards. Web. 29 Oct. 2009. http://www.collegestudentcreditcard.com/articles6.html

Digital image. Purdue Memorial Union Exterior. Purdue University. Web. 7 Dec. 2009.

http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/16413192.jpg

Digital image. Purdue Memorial Union. Purdue University, 19 May 2008. Web. 7 Dec. 2009.

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2008/flatbreads-PMUcommons.jpg

Digital image. Purdue Union Commons. Purdue University, 17 Mar. 2008. Web. 7 Dec. 2009. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/+2008/UnionCommons-Loops.jpg

"Dining Services." Purdue Memorial Union. Web. 07 Dec. 2009. http://www.union.purdue.edu/HTML/DiningServices/

"Food Court Location Survey." Survey. 27 Nov. 2009.

Irving, Jill A. "RE: Dining at the Union." 3 Dec. 2009. E-mail.

Alternative Solutions

We came up with several alternative solutions. The first solution seems like the most obvious: remove the cap on dining dollars at the Union. This would allow those with no other dining options to eat meals at the Union as many times as they need.

But this solution raises a new possibility: what if you run out of dining dollars? As of now, Purdue's policy is once you've spend your dining dollars, they're only renewed at the start of the next semester. We figured that you should be allowed to add to your dining dollars, much like you would do with your Boiler Express card. This would eliminate the possibility of not being able to purchase food at the Union.

However, Director of Dining Jill Irvin addresses this in an email: "When a student uses their dining dollars at the Union, we actually have to pay them this money. Of course, this means that this decreases the money that we have available to provide our services. An amount of $25 is a way of providing students a little more flexibility without us having to severely decrease services to provide."

When asked what would be the outcome of removing the dining dollar cap, Ms. Irving responded, "We would have to either decrease those services (close some operations) or increase our rates. I don't think that either of these two changes would be met favorably by our customers."

So while raising the dining dollar cap seems like the easiest solution at first, it would actually increase the rates of food at the Union. This solution would actually cause more problems than it would solve. Furthermore, if the cap won't be raised, then there's no need to add additional funds to the dining dollars

Which brings up another question: why not just use you Boilerexpress card to pay for your meals? There's no cap on how much you can spend using Boiler Express, and you can add more if you run out.

While the Boilerexpress option may be the best of the alternative solutions, it doesn't address the problem of using meals that you've already paid for. On-campus students have meal plans that are already paid for, so it makes sense to utilize those meals instead of spending money for a meal using Boilerexpress.

The Solution

Our primary solution is to add an On the Go! to the Union Food Court. This would enable students to utilize the their meal swipes and take advantage of a meal plan that's already paid for.

Director of Dining Jill Irvin states in an email that "the union serves a very different group of people than do the dining courts. Their (the Union's) primary customer is the off-campus student; ours (the dining court) is the on-campus student."

The fact that the Union serves mostly off campus students is exactly why it's so difficult for on-campus students. They find themselves on the south side have no way of using their meal swipes at the Union.

When asked if there were any solutions to this problem, Irvin responded "On the Go! provides students who may not have the time to get back to the dining courts at lunch a way to grab a meal to eat later."

An On the Go! in the Union would allow students to responsibly spend meal swipes that they've already paid for.

In order to make an On the Go! in the Union a reality, there would have to be several events that take place. First off, enough people would have to voice their opinion to Union and Purdue officials for them to be motivated enough to fix the situation. Next, there would have to be funds allocated by the university itself and a budget would have to be set for installation, upkeep, maintaining stock of food items, salaries of employees, ect. Lastly, either a vacant room would have to be refurbished, or some sort of renovation to the dining area would have to take place.

The Issue

If you spend a lot of time on the south side of campus, or you have a hectic lunchtime schedule, it can be difficult to find options in terms of lunch.

All the food courts are mostly confined to the north and west sides of campus, as the map to the left shows (dining courts are highlighted in red and On the Go locations are outlined in blue).The only dining option on the south side is the Union. While the food court in the Union offers a wide variety of choices, the problem comes with paying for them.

You could use your credit or debit card, but small things like meals add up. Nellie Mae reports that the average amount of credit card debt held by college graduates is $2,700, so the last thing you want to do is add to that potential debt by purchasing every lunch with a credit card.

Then comes the option of dining dollars. With the purchase of a meal plan, there's a set amount of dining dollars that can be used per semester. That amount varies by which meal plan you purchase.

However, dining dollars are capped at $25. This poses a problem for those who eat lunch on the south side of campus. While many people would like to use their dining dollars, many can't because they've reached the limit for the semester. Those without dining dollars are left with few options.