Every day, the average person eats breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s three meals. Yet, Fairfield students, regardless of their meal plan, are limited to two guest swipes per semester. So, if you’re planning on having a guest on campus for a full day, be prepared to pay out of pocket for one of their meals.
Frankly, two guest swipes are laughable. A meal plan is not cheap, especially when you’re paying for something marketed as “unlimited”. You’d think you could bring a guest to the Tully more frequently.
I understand that it’s more about the sentiment and that giving students more free will to bring guests into the Tully could be problematic, but let’s look at it in the grand scheme of things. A handful of extra people in the dining hall every week is not going to impact anything, nor will the university be losing any profit from these people eating there.
College is a time when students are living away from their families and friends, so it’s inevitable that these loved ones will come to visit every now and then. Likely, you’ll either have multiple guests come throughout a semester or have more than one visiting at once, meaning a whopping two guest swipes is simply ridiculous.
A meal plan is a large expense, and a majority of students would be hesitant to spend any extra money on food than necessary, especially when it’s just the university dining hall and not a special restaurant dining experience. And making your guest pay feels wrong. After all, you’re hosting them.
Most universities appear to be somewhat stingy with their guest swipes, yet Fairfield is among the worst offenders. At Sacred Heart, Yale and Southern Connecticut State, students get five guest swipes per semester with most meal plans. At Rutgers-New Brunswick, students receive 10. I’d argue that even 10 is on the lower side, but this data goes to show that Fairfield’s two-guest swipe policy is severely lacking.
I propose that students should be able to convert their own meal swipes to guest swipes. Different meal plans have a different number of meal conversion swipes per week, which can be used at on-campus locations like The Stag, Starbucks and Sushi-Do. For example, the unlimited meal plan gives students 14 of these swipes each week. So, if a friend were visiting and I planned to bring them to lunch in the Tully, I could just skip out on a coffee one day (or pay in dining dollars) to ensure they would get that swipe in.
UConn has a similar system in place currently. According to their website, students can pay for guests to enter their dining halls with a meal swipe from their meal plan, points or Husky Bucks (their version of dining dollars). Fairfield has the means to implement a program close to this.
Logistically, I’m not quite sure how this would work at Fairfield, as students have to wait about 20 minutes between meal swipes, but I think changes could be made in the case of guests. We need a more thought-out and student-centered guest swipe system or, at the very least, the number of guest swipes per semester should be increased. Higher-costing meal plans could get even more, but a higher baseline needs to be set. No guest should have to miss out on a meal because of university policy.