The fate of a new College meal plan proposal will be decided within the next month.
The proposal would charge students $70 a term to have a declining balance account, something for which students currently pay no extra fee.
Vice President and Treasurer Lyn Hutton said Acting College President James Wright, Provost Lee Bollinger and the Dean of the College Lee Pelton will discuss the proposal in the next few weeks, and if they decide to implement the plan, the new rates will take effect next fall.
A task force created to formulate a new plan to eliminate the freshmen punch system in November suggested the current plan that would require students to pay $400 a term for $330 in DBA.
The task force prepared a second report supporting the initial proposal after the group held an open forum to discuss the new plan, said Tucker Rossiter, associate director of dining services.
"After the [open] forum and my going to Assembly meetings, we were endorsing the plan again," Rossiter said. "It's in Lyn Hutton's hands now."
Hutton said there is only one major concern with the plan.
"Some students feel they are going to pay twice," she said.
She said she interpreted the comments to mean that those students did not want to change the meal plan, but said she did not sense that this was the majority opinion.
Rossiter said of the response to the proposal, "It's a little bit mixed, but a lot has been positive. There's still some concern about the $70 difference on the declining balance, but the opinion of the committee was that it was still the right thing to do."
Hutton said she will not make up her mind about the proposal until she has a chance to read more student responses.
According to Hutton, although the Student Assembly never voted on the new meal plan, she will take the Assembly's debate into account.
But Assembly secretary John Honovich '97 said he did not think the Assembly's input would affect the decision very much.
"I don't think they really care what the Assembly has to say," he said. "I would be surprised if they did."
He said he and 15 other Student Assembly members submitted a letter to Hutton and Dining Services describing an alternate plan to eliminate punches but were told only, "We'll look into it."
Hutton said she sees no way of eliminating the extra costs incurred by the other classes to accommodate the change.
"You can't have both," Hutton said. "The transition is going to require someone to pay."
