Meals and Points: a Portrait of a Hungry Freshman

I left for Thanksgiving Break with exactly one meal and 23 points to my name. On the car ride home, I made some careful calculations:

Because one bottle of Naked Juice costs roughly three points, I’ll be able to average one Naked Juice every other day for the rest of the semester! And hey, I can even visit Usdan once!

But this isn’t all fun and games. With the arrival of finals, I’m pretty much screwed.

Thus, over Thanksgiving break, instead of wasting my time studying, I decided to formulate a plan to avoid being hungry. After hearing about my friends’ frequent hunger pangs, I thought it was best to publicly document my quest to remain properly fed.

But before I could lay out a plan of attack, I knew I had to address this problem strategically. I quickly hopped on WesAdmits to consult my fellow students about their experiences with year-end hunger.

“I managed to obtain a Bon Appetit uniform and snuck into Usdan one or two times last year,” Anonymous Cardinal ’16 confided to me in a Facebook message. “I felt terrible about it, but I didn’t want to die of starvation.”

Other students have resorted to spending their own money and stockpiling on college student staples like ramen noodles and instant oats.

Aidan Martinez ’17, meanwhile, plans to rely on the charity of others to keep healthy: “I’ll attend alllllllll [emphasis his] the events on campus with free food.”

Beyond begging and mooching, some students have even begun using their bodies to ensure they don’t go hungry. “I just go into Weshop and twerk by the counter,” Michael Ortiz-Castro ’17 explained. “Eventually someone will take mercy on me and pay for my stuff.”

I hope you’re taking notes because I sure am!

I found it surprising that no one remembered that most people still have guest swipes on their WesCards.

Because I complain a lot about my problems to nearly everyone I come in contact with, a lot of people have agreed to let me use those guest swipes during my meals.

Speaking of guest swipes, I’m not quite sure how they work, but I’ve contemplated dressing up as one of my alter-egos, Federico, using said swipe, and feasting on a prime burrito from Summerfields.

Even better, some people have even agreed to begin stealing borrowing food from Usdan for me using these innovative containers called ‘tupperware’.

Now that I had thoroughly attacked this problem from the core, I decided to find out what our students representatives in the Wesleyan Student Assembly are doing about this problem. Justin Gitlin ’15, head of the Sustainability, Facilities, and Finance committee, whose purview includes dining and the meal plan, conducted a short interview with me about the issue.

Frizzly: What have you heard about year-end hunger?

Justin:  We have been receiving numerous complaints about students running out of meals before the end of the semester. It seems as though the issue is mismanagement of meals, as numerically every meal plan option offers enough meals/points to cover the entire semester. Students often get into trouble by frequenting the more expensive campus eateries, such as Wes Wings or Red and Black.

FRZ: So what is the WSA doing about this?

Until the unlimited meal plan comes about, based on what our ingenious peers are doing, we have the following options:

• Using your boatload of meals and points because you were actually responsible in how you used them.
• Sneaking into Usdan.
• Begging for food from strangers.
• Attending every lecture and event on campus that supplies free food.
• Stripping and/or twerking for food/meals/points.

Good luck!