As a college student, many find their money dwindling into smaller and smaller amounts. Most students want to find the cheapest restaurant to eat at off campus, seeing that the Ferguson Center and campus cafeterias get boring after a while. The University of Alabama has created Dining Dollars to help students with this problem. Dining Dollars is a system set up by Bama Dining Services in order to provide dining convenience and variety to students. With one quick swipe of ACTion Card, students can enjoy meals from locations on and off campus. However, many students are beginning to find the convenience of the system wearing out due to its lack of diversity in restaurants.
Because of the Dining Dollars system, all students with nine or more credit hours are automatically billed three hundred dollars each fall and spring semester. While some may argue that three hundred dollars is a large amount for an eight week semester, it is not the case when you can only spend it in certain locations that have extremely high prices. For example, Dining Dollars is accepted at a few locations on campus such as the Ferguson Center’s food court, Doster Café, Julia’s Market, Bidgood Bistro, and Lakeside Lattes. Buffalo Phil’s, Crimson Café, Domino’s Pizza, and Strip Teas and Coffees are the only four off campus businesses that accept Dining Dollars. This is a big inconvenience to those students who do not live on campus because it is unlikely for them to drive to the university to eat at one of the on campus dining areas and are therefore stuck with only four options in spending their Dining Dollars. Even students who live on campus, begin to get tired of the Ferguson Center’s food court and the Doster Café. It is hard to try something new when money is low and parents are reluctant in giving extra spending money to their child. So the question is why are students being forced to pay 600 dollars over a course of two semesters to eat at the same restaurants over and over?
One solution to the problem of the limited choices in the Dining Dollars system would be to combine Dining Dollars and Bama Cash. Similar to Dining Dollars, Bama Cash is a system set up by Bama Dining. However, Bama Cash has a much broader range with how it can be spent. Not only is it accepted at restaurants, it is also accepted at local grocery stores, gas stations, book stores, vending machines, pizza places, laundry areas, movie rentals, copy services, mail services, pharmacies, retail stores, coffee shops, and beauty salons. A total of 95 businesses outside of the university accept Bama Cash versus the four that accept Dining Dollars. By combining Bama Cash and Dining Dollars, students would have a much wider range of options on how to spend their three hundred dollars each semester.
Another solution to the problem would be for the university to get more businesses to become part of the Dining Dollars system. According to the manager at Buffalo Phil’s, in order to be a part of the Dining Dollars system, the business is required to give back a certain percentage of the profits to the university. The manager also explained that Buffalo Phil’s only became a part of the Dining Dollars system after the university asked them. Could the reason for so little off campus business participation in the Dining Dollars system be due to the university simply not asking businesses to join? If so, this problem could easily be rectified by campaigning the system to the local businesses and displaying the profitable benefits Dining Dollars could bring.
The lack of variety in the Dining Dollars businesses is ruining what would be an extremely good dining experience for students at the University of Alabama. While taking notions to provide a better selection of eating areas in the system might be a long process, the end result of having more restaurants to choose from would provide a greater satisfaction to the student body.
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