Dining Next Year is Going to SUCK!
At least, that’s what I think.
For the 2025-2026 school year, Elmhurst University Dining (operated by Chartwells Higher Ed) will be transitioning to a combination dining-dollars and swipes system.
Gone are the days of having anywhere between 1,500 and 3,500 Bluejay Bucks on your Jaypass–instead, with the medium meal plan, you will receive 300 Bluejay Bucks for the entire semester, and 17 dining swipes each week.
Swipes are only valid tender in the main cafeteria, dining dollars are for all other dining (the Roost, the Founders Lounge café, and the A.C. Buhler Library café). This means if you plan on eating in the Roost, or getting a coffee every morning, you better be prepared to refill your Jaypass with some regularity.
And it gets worse! Your swipes reset each week! With 17 swipes a week as a resident, that averages to 2.4 meals per day in the café in a 7-day week. 2.4 meals you must eat every single day, or else you’re throwing money away.
Of course, the main café isn’t necessarily open 7 days a week every week. What happens on holiday weekends? What happens when there are special events? Board of Trustees meetings? Do your swipes suddenly become valid elsewhere? Do you get less for that week? Or are you just out of luck and forced to waste money?
At other larger universities that utilize all-you-can-eat swipe meal plans, a swipe is roughly equivalent to $10-15. There’s no information on the Chartwells FAQ page about the equivalent price of a swipe, but using that value as an estimate, every swipe also needs to contain at least $10 worth of food to not be a waste of money. That means 2.4 full meals a day. No more snacking!
The new meal plans will also have 2 “guest meals”, regardless of what plan you purchase (except the apartment plan, which is only $460 dining dollars/Bluejay Bucks). What this means isn’t entirely clear. The online FAQ has no information, and after being given the opportunity to review materials given to campus RAs, there’s no explanation at all as to what constitutes using a “guest meal.”
Does this mean that if your friend comes to campus, you cannot feed them more than twice, ever? What happens if you have more than two friends visit? What if a friend visits more than twice? What happens to students who run out of swipes for the week and have a friend who wants to donate one of theirs?
Curiously, on the online Chartwells FAQ, it specifically notes that students cannot use a swipe to dine in the café AND fill an ozzi-to-go container. They must use two separate swipes. Does that apply to a regular plate of food, too? How is dining services planning to enforce this?
Frankly, the new dining plans feel designed to scam students out of their money. It doesn’t help that they’ve all gone up in price. At $2,761.50 a semester for the medium (17 swipes weekly) plan, it’s certainly cheaper for a cooking-savvy individual to just buy their own food. Too bad you’re required to buy a meal plan to live on campus!
