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Dining plan minimums shouldn’t grow

It’s almost time to break out the pocketbooks again, and with a new increase in dining services fees, be prepared to open wider.

Starting next semester, the fees will jump from $800 to $1,000 for freshmen and from $600 to $750 for returning students. Fees for Tom Brown-Pete Wright residents will also increase from $400 to $500.

Dining services officials say some of this increase will actually be taxes that students already pay. It’s just that now they’re going to have charges upfront so students are completely aware of them instead of ones that are just tacked on to the bill.

Residential Services Director Roger Fisher said that a mere 1 percent of dining plans is not spent at the end of the semester.

However, the number does not take into account that many students simply buy large amounts of food they do not need at the end of the semester because they know that the money is nonrefundable.

This is why dining services is able to offer unnecessary ways for students to fritter away their funds like having the truck sale at the end of the semester or letting students combine their reserves to get catered food.

Regardless of the fact that TCU required them to buy the unneeded plan in the first place, students don’t want the money to go to waste.

If, as Fisher says, a majority of students add more money to their plans, they would have probably continued to do so. But there are some students who do not need to use what they have, much less more, and it is these students who are being ignored with this increase.