I’m not terribly fond of legalized stealing. Don’t get me wrong—I love Auburn University. I just don’t like wealth transfers. Every semester we’re forced to spend $300-$995 at on-campus dining places. If Auburn University had to mandate this, were the variety, prices, healthy options, and convenience really that great in the first place?
The website at http://www.auburn.edu/administration/tigercard/reqdining-faq.html explains why the required dining plan is supposedly in our best interest. Let’s see whether the plan is serving us or AU’s pockets.
The website says the plan provides “variety” and that AU is "competitive in [their] pricing." First, I think we can find a lot more variety if we get to use our money wherever we choose. And second, has anyone else noticed that Outtakes provides some of the same food you can get at Wal-Mart, etc., for prices that are up to $3.50 over the Wal-Mart prices? The required dining plan is essentially giving them monopoly power!
And it's not as if the food options are very healthy. One time, a Panda worker suggested I get a second item because I could “walk it off.” I said no, and later I looked up the nutrition content online—and laughed. According to the online food database called CalorieKing, a panda bowl of chow mein and orange chicken is 920 calories, and then add in a small coke and fortune cookie and you’re at 1218 calories in just one meal, which would take over five and a half hours to “walk it off.” And check out the calories at Au Bon Pain. I used to like that place.
And the best part is that, at the end of the year, Auburn gets to keep whatever we didn't spend! If that wasn't the case, I bet a lot more of you wouldn't spend so much on junk food or random strangers at Caribou during the last week of class. As much as I love it when people do that for me, I’d rather they did it out of generosity, not because their money was inevitably going to vanish into some shadowy figure’s pockets.
In conclusion, the required dining plan is not in our best interest. Their prices aren’t competitive, the options aren’t that great or healthy, and we end up spending more money than we otherwise would, just because they force us to. I don’t think this plan is supporting our socializing or studying as much as it is supporting AU’s pockets.
It takes less than 3 seconds to sign this petition, but if it helps get rid of the rule, that’s up to about $1000 a year which you can spend however you want. So please sign this petition, spread the word, and write to Mike Hubbard or Tom Whatley, our Senate and House representatives, because you deserve to choose where your money goes!