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Editor’s note: This story contains details of eating disorders. If you are struggling with disordered eating contact the National Eating Disorder Awareness hotline by calling 800-931-2237 or by going to https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/.

Several Syracuse University students have created a petition in response to the university’s decision to remove meal swipe options at Schine Student Center and campus convenience stores.

SU implemented meal swipe options at additional locations during the 2020-21 academic year as a temporary solution to “de-densify” the dining centers and more safely disperse crowds, said Sarah Scalese, senior associate vice president for university communications, in a statement to The Daily Orange. Before the pandemic, Schine and other campus convenience stores did not accept meal swipes.

SU rising sophomores Sophia Clinton, Iona Volynets and Ashtha Singh — with the help of a few other students — created a petition and email template calling for SU to allow students to use meal swipes at Schine and campus convenience stores.

The students created the petition to challenge the university’s policy change and to illustrate that this policy shows structural issues within the university, Clinton said, as many students consider SU’s decision to remove meal swipe options from Schine and campus convenience stores to be inequitable and too restrictive.

The petition has reached over 1,850 signatures as of Sunday afternoon. The statement from Scalese did not directly address what SU would do if the petition reaches a certain number of signatures.

This fall, the university plans to utilize a block meal plan system with plans that offer students a set number of meal swipes for the entire semester. Several of the plans include dining dollars, which students can use at locations such as Schine and campus convenience stores. Unlike last year, the plan does not allow students to use meal swipes at these locations, limiting meal swipes to main campus dining centers.

For the 2021-22 academic year, the minimum meal plan for first year students is 220 meal swipes per semester and $200 dining dollars per semester, which costs $3,910 per semester, or $260 per week. That’s about $40 of food per day, Singh said, which she believes is too much for students to pay.

“That’s a ridiculous metric that the university banks on us just to accept and not actually analyze,” Singh said. “And that’s not realistic for students who can’t afford that much.”

SU has a two-year on-campus living requirement for undergraduate students, so students living on Main Campus both years are required to have a meal plan with meal swipes for all four semesters. Those not living on Main Campus are not required to have a meal plan, but for students who live on South Campus or off campus but do not have a car, campus convenience stores may be their only option to purchase food, Singh said.

Locations such as on-campus convenience stores and Schine are easily and comfortably available to students who can afford them, Volynets said, while low- to middle-income students who have difficulty paying for their college experience are disproportionately restricted in affording these options.

Additionally, as someone who has struggled with an eating disorder since she was 9 years old, Volynets said she fell into an unhealthy weight range during her first semester on campus because she often did not want to eat dining hall meals, many of which she said she found unappealing.

“Once Schine reopened, there were options that I actually enjoyed eating,” Volynets said. “And it made it a lot easier for me to force myself and push myself to eat enough, which is difficult.”

Having access to food that people like eating is important for people recovering from eating disorders and disordered eating, Volynets said. Approximately 40% of incoming college freshmen will already have an unhealthy relationship with food, and the statistic rises to 80% when strictly examining female incoming freshmen, according to Healthline.

For some students of color, food represents a part of their lifestyle, and campus convenience stores allow these students to celebrate their culture with traditional foods, Singh said. Especially within religions in South Asia and the Middle East, Singh said, there are a lot of dietary restrictions, but having accessible campus convenience stores and dining options makes it easier for students who follow these restrictions to eat balanced meals.

“(At SU) — which has such an aggressively white population — the little bits of your culture that you can hold on to are very valuable,” Singh said. “And when there’s so little of that, for them to take it away from us is just so demeaning.”

Some students have other dietary restrictions, such as lactose-intolerance, veganism, vegetarianism or food allergies. These students may also experience difficulty in attending to their needs, Clinton said.

Ultimately, Singh said the university should have been clearer about this change in policy when it altered the meal plans, and she also said she would have liked the university to provide a platform for students to speak before implementing a policy.

Student feedback drove the overhaul of the meal plan system, said Kris Klinger, associate vice president of auxiliary services, in a May news release. SU’s Housing, Meal Plan and ID Card Services Office held stakeholder meetings and student focus groups with help from a college meal plan consultant, according to the release.

“(SU is) the bottleneck in their own process,” Singh said. “They are the roadblock in their own success, which I really think could just also be the tagline for Syracuse as a whole university.”

Singh also said that students should continue to call on SU to allow students to use meal swipes in Schine and campus convenience stores. “This isn’t something that they can refuse to acknowledge and hope it’ll go away,” she said. “We’re not going to give up on this.”

David Bruen, president of SU’s Student Association, also said that students should continue advocating for meal swipes at Schine. SU should make food as accessible to as many students as possible, he said

“The fact that the student center for this campus, and the food options that so many students use on a daily basis and rely on, are not even accessible to our meal plan is so absurd,” Bruen said. “The university needs to be more transparent. And I think this is certainly another example of that.”

Published on June 20, 2021 at 2:51 pm

Contact Lilli: [email protected] | @LilliIannella