well i just had lunch with nick bott at ‘el toro’. el toro is an eating club for toyon residents here at stanford. it was actually pretty cool–it had the ambience of a semi-run-down mexican food restaurant, with some lively mexican polka beats emanating from the kitchen. in any case, it made me realize once again how screwed over i am by wilbur dining, with their points and their overpriced entrees. here’s just a brief outline of my complaint:
1. we are required to buy one of three meal plans–Lite, Regular, or Premium, which are all about $80 in price difference
2. depending on the meal plan, we get a certain number of points for the quarter. i have the Lite plan, so i have 894 points for the quarter
3. some data: 1 point = $1.33. and 894 points equates to about 6 points per meal, if i eat twice a day.
4. entrees range from 3.50 points to 7 points. this, in dollars, is $4.66 to $9.31. a 16oz fountain drink adds $1.26.
5. i definitely should not have to pay $10 to get a medium sized meal and a drink. but this is very easily possible.
6. the dining hall also sells commercial items, like snapple, yoplait yogurt, whole fruit, etc…
7. a larger-than-12-oz-bottled-drink, i.e. Snapple, Nantucket Nectars, IBC, etc… is 2.45 points. this is $3.26. $3.26!!! at Safeway, a local, expensive grocery store, one bottle of the exact same snapple costs $1.39. the dining hall price is 2.3 times the market price! and why could this be? OPERATING COSTS?? all they have to do is take the bottles off the truck and put them on the shelf. 0 hardship.
8. this is completely unacceptable.
so, i find it horribly unjust that we are forced by the university to be uneconomical. furthermore, the university is not even consistent: not everyone suffers under the extortion of dining services. it is only because i am in Soto, a wilbur dorm, that i am subject to this treatment. what compounds things is that i did not even CHOOSE wilbur–a bad draw number limited my choices to the extent that i was virtually forced in here. and, even if it is argued that i did choose wilbur, at the time the choice was made wilbur was not on a points system, and they changed over to this system without my, or any student’s, input. apparently it is not enough for the university to charge us obscene amounts of money for tuition; they must also want to squeeze us dry of money that, if left to us, could feed a whole family for a quarter.
this is my complaint, and i’m going to the top with it. dining services, you’re out there, and i will get you.
disc on spin: raw materials, mars ill
