In September, students took to Reddit to discuss the vastly different prices across U of T college dining halls. Prices across campus for meals and food items vary, affecting those who eat at the most expensive dining halls on campus. 

Dining plan usage and cost

Every student living in a U of T residence is required to buy a mandatory residence meal plan that allows them to purchase food and drinks at the university’s dining halls as well as some food places and convenience stores across campus. 

Looking at the colleges, New College, University College (UC), St. Michael’s College (SMC), Victoria College, and Trinity College offer dining plan options. The Chestnut Residence also offers meal plan choices for its residents. 

Innis College and Woodsworth College don’t offer their own meal plans and don’t have dining halls. For students at colleges without a dining hall, U of T offers a commuter dining plan, which is also available for commuter students and students living off-campus.

The costs for the meal plans vary based on the way students use them. Trinity College, New College, and UC offer a pay-by-item system, meaning you pick a meal item at your dining hall and the cashier will deduct the amount from the balance of your T-card.

At SMC, all residents choose between a five-day meal plan, which provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner from Monday to Friday, or a seven-day plan that offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner to students from Monday to Friday, as well as brunch and dinner on the weekends.

Victoria College provides students with a specific number of meals per semester based on the dining plan they purchase, the lowest amount being 336 meals and the highest being 383.

The Chestnut Residence offers a limit of meal swipes — how many times a student can enter the dining hall for a meal — per week depending on the dining plan selected, meaning that there is a weekly cap on meals. 

Individual meal and item costs

New College claims that the average weekly spend for its most affordable meal plan should be $180, meaning approximately $25.71 per day. 

Trinity College loads 60 per cent of its meal plans’ dollars onto students’ cards in the fall semester — proportional to each student’s dining plan — and the remaining 40 per cent in the winter semester. The total cost of the Trinity meal plan ranges from $7,056 to $7,775, depending on the plan.

UC suggests that for those on the basic meal plan, students should spend $24.20 daily out of the dining dollars loaded on students’ T-Cards for the fall semester. 

Effect on students and price disparity

The difference in prices is quite large across campus; even students whose items cost less have to use a significant part of their dining plan’s daily total to serve their nutritional needs. 

Olivia Bello — a first-year social sciences student at UC — is currently on the basic meal plan and has two meals a day. “For now, I do not think I am personally affected by the prices at UC. However, that is definitely subject to change,” wrote Bello in an email to The Varsity. 

She wrote further, “To my knowledge, I am not sure if the UC dining hall takes our feedback into account, although they regularly conduct student surveys to gauge our opinions.”

Sarah Lu-Liang — a first-year mathematical and physical sciences student who lived for a brief period of time at Chestnut Residence and is now at Trinity College — wrote in an email to The Varsity that she prefers Chestnut Residence’s meal plan because she was able to eat more without being deterred from the high cost and small portions of food at Trinity College’s dining hall. 

Jacinta Ceballos-Fernandez — a first-year social science student also living at Trinity College — wrote in an email to The Varsity that the dining dollars loaded onto her T-Card are less than what Trinity College claims on its website.

“[At] the beginning of the year, a few of us calculated on the budget tool and if we had 3 meals a day, we would be almost $30 over budget,” wrote Ceballos-Fernandez.