Returning St. Edward’s University students are currently guaranteed one thing in regards to their meal budgets–Bon Appétit will be taking a larger bite out of their wallets next year.

Director of Auxiliary Services Mike Stone said the current meal plan fund is not large enough to support everything the dining service is providing. To accommodate the deficit of Bon Appétit, the dining service provider on campus, St. Edward’s has made the decision that all undergraduate students will be required to purchase a $100-per-semester minimum meal plan in Fall 2010.

The university is contractually obligated to create an environment for both Bon Appétit and Texenza to be profitable, but Stone said that he could not disclose details about the contract or the budget of Bon Appétit, which is privately-owned. Stone said the university is also not directly responsible for closing the budget gap.

For the first time, a meal plan will be required for commuter students, because all undergraduate full-time students will have to purchase a meal plan.

Currently, the costs of the meal plans at St. Edward’s are all higher than the costs at the University of Texas at Austin, St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Trinity University in San Antonio, Southwestern University in Georgetown and Dallas Baptist University, all of which use different food service providers.

In addition to new requirements, all meal plan options will be increasing by 5 percent in the fall, and beginning in June, the university will not allow meal plan rollover between academic years. All unused meal plan dollars will go to the university and Bon Appétit.

This means that the highest-cost meal plan has increased from $1550 to $2100 since Bon Appétit took over in the 2007-2008 academic school year, which will amount to a 35.5 percent increase in meal plan costs over four years.

Options weighed

Stone said before the decision was made, the administration looked to see if increases were even necessary.

After Bon Appétit tried cutting expenses, reducing management positions andcutting service hours, the money coming in was still not enough to make Bon Appétit profitable, Stone said. Between the insufficient cost-cutting measures, student theft and meal plan dollars lost to Texenza, Stone said that increases were necessary.

“The way [increases] have been done in the past is basically just to boost the meal plan rates, which has been primarily against students living in residence halls,” Stone said. “But the rate we would have to increase them to get the funding we needed looked to us to be problematic; a 10 percent [increase] for a couple years.”

While increasing meal plan rates 10 percent for students living in residence halls was another alternative, there were three other options considered in the discussion.

The second option was to turn one of the dining facilities into an “all-you-can-eat” type of facility, where students swipe their card and would be able to eat without limit.

“If you’re the person who’s going to want two entrees, three cokes and a desert, that’s a great deal for you,” said Stone. “On the other hand, if you’re a small salad person, all you care to eat is not a good deal for you.”

In the “all-you-can-eat” option though, students would have a set number of times they could visit the facility a week and would be charged even if they missed a meal.

The third alternative was to cut out a portion of the funding to be used only in Texenza, but Stone said that option was so complex, they ruled it out.

The fourth alternative was the commuter plan that was agreed upon, which spreads the support of meal plan funding across the student body. Miscommunication Stone presented the drafts of these four meal plan alternatives to the Student Government Association on Nov. 19, 2009, and on Jan. 28, three days before the Feb. 1 deadline to set rates.

Stone said after the meeting, the implementation of the commuter plan went forward.

“I don’t think anyone enjoys the prospect of increasing costs, but the majority of the input we received in our various discussions with SGA members was that the proposed plan was the best of the options available to us,” said Stone.

But SGA felt differently, passing a unanimous resolution Feb. 4 to express disapproval for the plan and its alternatives.

Christopher Duke, SGA vice president of Intergovernmental Affairs, said that many SGA members did indeed believe the plan to be the least painful option of the four, but that the resolution was passed to reject all four plans in favor of negotiating an alternative.

“If they tell me there’s no way but to raise the cost, I don’t buy that logic,” Duke said. There was just one problem; just as Stone was unaware of SGA’s disapproval, Duke said

Stone did not make SGA aware of the Feb. 1 deadline.

Officials from SGA and Stone have been discussing the matter since.Expenses on the horizonSt. Edward’s has expanded the dining services substantially over the past few years, including opening of Hunt Hall Café and The Huddle in January 2009. Despite needing more money to better cover current costs, Bon Appétit still plans to expand in the future.

Stone said that Bon Appétit is paying for renovations to the bakery and coffee area of Hunt Café and is looking to add a mobile Outtakes-like unit next to the library to its range of services. Bon Appétit believes that there is an increased opportunity for sales.

However, like the construction of the new facilities, that means more costs to be covered. While university officials have discussed disallowing meal plan dollars to be spent at Texenza’s coffee shops, nothing has come to fruition.

In the meantime, SGA hopes to negotiate to keep meal plan costs down.

“Times are tough,” Duke said. “Americans across the country are tightening their belts. I think SGA and the university ought to use the same common-sense approach.”