Next fall, freshmen will have to pay $100 and upperclass students will have to pay a sliding scale of fees to have a Declining Balance Account from Dartmouth Dining Services.
Vice President and Treasurer Lyn Hutton said the College decided late last week to implement a variation of a proposal by the Meal Plan Task Force to eliminate the freshman "punch" requirement.
Under the new plan, which will take effect next fall, all students will have the option of a 14, 10 or five punch meal plan or a minimum DBA of $400.
The charge for having a DBA will be depend on what year a student is. Sophomores will be charged $25 a term, juniors will be charged $38 and seniors will be charged $70.
For instance, a junior would pay $400 to get $362 worth of DBA. Unlike the current system, the DBA will be fully refundable, except the fee.
The Meal Plan Task Force, formed by Hutton and former Student Assembly President Nicole Artzer '94 last spring, suggested all students pay $400 a term for a $330 declining balance. But Hutton said "$70 a term would be far too high."
Many students protested the original plan, saying it would force upperclass students to subsidize the freshman meal plan twice.
Assembly Vice President John Honovich '97, a member of the original task force who opposed the plan, said he is much happier with the new plan.
"I think that the revised meal plan is a great improvement over the status quo," Honovich said.
"It's wonderful that the administration has compromised. I think that the students will react positively," he said.
According to Hutton, the new meal plan proposal had three aims: to make money in DBAs fully refundable, to offer the same "menu of options" to all students and to implement the changes without cutting back on dining hall hours, reducing the number of employees or increasing prices.
The new plan is "more suited to students' dining needs," said Tucker Rossiter, assistant head of DDS.
Hutton said most freshmen oppose the punch system, while most upperclassman feel that the partial refundability of declining balance accounts is unfair.
"If I understand from the complaints I have heard from students, there was a notion of one class paying dining dues" to subsidize the dining program for all students, she said.
"We are very concerned with being as fair as possible," she said.
Hutton said the biggest complaint about the Meal Plan Task Force's plan was the $70 fee for DBA.
According to Hutton, most schools that offer meal plans with declining balance accounts impose some type of charge.
"There are some fixed costs associated with running a meal plan," Rossiter said.
