In addition to the current slate of meal plans, a new UT dining proposal offers three new apartment residential meal plans and one new meal plan for students in residence halls.
Mary Leslie Patterson, marketing director for UT dining, said the proposal introduces the Any Five Apartment Resident Meal Plan, the Any Eight Apartment Resident Meal Plan and the Apartment Resident Dining Dollar Plan. All of the plans would cost $989 per semester. The any five apartment plan would provide five meals a week and $500 dining dollars per semester. The any eight apartment plan would offer eight meals a week and $200 dining dollars per semester. The all dining-dollar meal plan would give students $989 dining dollars for the semester.
The apartment residential meal plans would be available to students at Volunteer Hall, Laurel Hall, the Apartment Residence Hall and Sutherland Apartments.
If the proposal is passed, students at regular residence halls would have the choice of a new Any Eight Meal Plan, allocating eight meals per week and $450 dining dollars, Patterson said. This plan would cost $1366 per semester, the same would-be cost of the Any Ten meal plan and the Unlimited Access meal plan.
Patterson said the new apartment plans were a result of about 580 student responses from a recent survey conducted by UT dining.
“What a lot of the students seem to agree upon is they want to move into an apartment residence hall, but they aren’t really ready to prepare all their meals on their own yet,” she said. “So they want to be able to dine on campus but have the availability to cook for themselves on occasion too.”
Patterson said the new plans in the proposal give students that option.
“Definitely, you have the meals on campus, and then you have your dining dollars where you can make purchases from the convenient stores and also enjoy the retail brands,” she said.
The apartment residential meal plans would also give students $3.10 in dining dollars for unused meals. Brian Browning, business manager for finance and administration, said this was proposed to make the meal plans more appealing to students.
In addition to these new meal plans, commuters would now have the option of choosing from any meal plan offered at UT, Patterson said.
“A lot of commuters want more than just a commuter plan,” she said. “When you look at the commuter plans, they are a little bit smaller, and a lot of students want the option of the benefit of dining on campus, and they actually do save money over leaving off campus.”
Browning said the proposal was passed by the Office of Finance and Administration and would soon be brought before the UT Dining Services Advisory Committee so students could get a chance to comment on the plan.
In addition to the survey conducted, UT dining also met with the United Residence Halls Council and three members from the Student Government Association representing apartments.
He said he expects the new dining plans to be finalized before students sign up for housing contracts in March.
Due to the business plan in place with ARAMARK at this time, Browning said the university could not offer $3.10 in dining dollars for every unused meal to students in the regular residence halls with regular meal plans, such as Any Ten and Unlimited. In lieu of getting $3.10 back, the university has increased meal plan acceptance at new locations on campus and continues to allow unused dining dollars to roll over from the fall semester to the spring semester.
UT dining and university administration are currently in talks about potentially adding a Moe’s Southwest Grill and IHOP to Presidential Court by the beginning of the fall 2009 semester. Browning said, if approved, construction could begin as early as the end of the spring semester or the beginning of summer.