Shelsea Deravil, shderavil@ursinus.edu
On March 31, 2021, in an email sent to the student body, Ursinus College announced that it is extending the Dining Dollars Meal Plan for students who are on that meal plan only. As stated in the email, “[e]ffective immediately, we are providing students on this meal plan with an extra 21 meals (three meals per day for seven days). These meal swipes can be used in Upper Wismer, Lower Wismer, and Natural in the Floy Lewis Bakes Center.”
This update occurred after many students “expressed concerns about the availability of [their] dining dollars for the remainder of the spring semester, mostly due to an absence of a traditional spring break.” Indeed, this spring semester implemented spring “break days” (five days scattered throughout the semester) to make up for the loss of the normal, one-week spring break off-campus. Since Ursinus has found ways to allow students on-campus for the 2020-2021 school year during COVID time, it made sense that the college also encouraged minimal travel. Having the traditional, one-week off campus spring break meant that students would return with possible contact tracing, testing positive for COVID, or just putting the campus-body at risk.
During these spring break days, the Dining Halls are still open, which means that those days are treated like any other day when students might spend their dining money on campus. Missy Bryant, Dean of Students and Vice President of Student Affairs, confirmed via email response to The Grizzly that the 21 meals that have been added onto the Dining Dollars meal plan can be used at any time. “It is a total of 21 meals to use any time before the end of the semester,” she stated.
The Grizzly also asked Dean Bryant whether the “extra 21 meals plan” would be reimplemented, in case some of the students on the Dining Dollars Plan would run out of the first extra 21 meals given to them, or Dining Dollars altogether, to which Bryant replied, “[w]e will make sure that students have access to meals while they are on campus. We do expect that students are budgeting their dining dollars and the 21 meals accordingly.”