I believe U of T’s meal plan system is broken: the declining-balance model leaves too many students with non-refundable dining dollars. Reforms such as the All-You-Care-To-Eat (AYCTE) model are an improvement, but still fall short of achieving equity and sustainability. Beginning in first year, these issues compound, leading to increased food waste and reduced trust in the institution. 

The first-year transition and institutional dependence

From my experience, which is shared by many first-year students from outside the GTA, the idea of moving to a new city is daunting. In light of this, the university offers multiple resources to ensure a smooth transition to adulthood in a new environment. 

While I believe social life is undoubtedly one of the most critical tenets of university life, finances often serve as an ominous overseer of a student’s life. Given that Toronto’s rental prices are unaffordable for many students, first-year students may opt to live in residence as an affordable, reliable way to secure housing for the school year. 

Yet while on-campus residences offer lower-than-average rents, the cost is often offset by meal plans. As most residences, except Woodsworth and Innis College, require them, these plans can set students back as much as $7,625 a year. 

For students, this can leave them with a lot of leftover meal plan money, with no way to make good use of their meal plan dollars at the end of the year. Many are left with hundreds, if not thousands, of expiring dollars that otherwise could have paid for rent, enabled a night out with friends, or, if you’re anything like me, bought another iced London fog from Starbucks. 

AYCTE: A partial fix that creates new problems

With the widespread end-of-year surpluses, some residences such as CampusOne have transitioned from the former declining balance system to an AYCTE system, in which students are given a set number of “swipes” per week to select items from the meal hall. 

At face value, this addresses the equity issue of paying an upfront cost that is unused by year-end. Yet it is problematic for several groups of students: those with chaotic schedules who may be unable to use all their swipes; those who experience decision inertia and skip meals early in the week out of fear of running out later; and those who burn through their swipes at the start of the week. These issues are overtly compounded by the fact that unused meal swipes do not carry over into subsequent weeks, leading to similar issues as the declining balance system. 

I believe that planning ahead is necessary, but a system that requires 18-year-olds to plan their meals perfectly to avoid losing thousands of dollars is poorly designed. Systems ought to be evaluated on typical use, rather than idealized behaviour. In such a case, there must be a way to ensure that all students are treated equitably. 

What solutions are on the table?

There are obvious ones: allowing for full refunds, rollovers, and complete transfers to Flex Dollars. The latter encourages students to explore more on-campus dining options (validating my love for Tortillas Cantina), reducing potential food waste and easing disgruntlement over unused balances. 

Alternatively, enabling payments in smaller intervals (e.g., monthly payments) eases the burden of a substantial upfront payment for many students. Allowing incremental payments creates a system that allows students to use their meal plan dollars by the end of their fourth year, even if they lived in residence for only one year. 

The biggest concern is institutional resistance. Despite some residences allowing rollovers into Flex Dollars, for others, mandatory meal plans are a predictable revenue stream, and large-scale refunds or rollovers would remove this source of revenue. If enabling refunds, transfers, and rollovers is impossible, the university must consider the issue of sustainability in terms of food waste. 

Sustainability without transparency

U of T ranked second in the world in the latest QS sustainability rankings and has made it clear that they value sustainability. Moreover, the university has taken on initiatives that further rectify the issue of food waste. Yet, I don’t believe this is conveyed clearly to those on the meal plans. 

Of course, these projects remain laudable in their own right. Yet, combined with the above mentioned issues of food waste not being actively dealt with sustainably, the university particularly lacks in advertising ways students can charitably use their meal dollars. 

One student took to the University of Toronto’s Reddit page, asking what they could do with their excess money. Another post had a plurality of differing opinions on what to do with the excess money, such as purchasing snacks in bulk. In short, it seems that the issue students deal with is that these sustainability initiatives are being implemented solely within the kitchen, and aren’t considering the student experience. 

Making sustainability actionable

At the end of the day, meal plan issues are not a minor inconvenience. They are a core facet of how students experience two key tenets of life at U of T: affordability and sustainability. A system that predictably produces surplus whilst denying students meaningful ways to ensure equilibrium breaks those two tenets. 

Ultimately, to best safeguard these ideals, the meal plan system needs reform, whether it be through direct fiduciary means or through the university’s sustainability actions. 

Russell Adler is a second-year undergraduate student double-majoring in bioethics and environmental ethics at the University of Toronto.