Meal plan a victim of its own success at Denison U

GRANVILLE, Ohio — When students returned to campus a couple of weeks ago, they were surprised to find that Meal-X, the most popular meal option for dinner, underwent multiple changes.

Some of the changes included extra charges for meat and tofu for the vegetable bowl option, extra charges for queso in the “Cantina” section and the sandwich bar was completely taken off the list for Meal-X options.

Jennifer McGann, the general manager for dining services, said that she, the dining staff and Jenna McDevitt, director of administrative services, began talking about making changes to Meal-X at the end of last year. She said that they didn’t talk to the dining committee, which has student representatives, because “most of the talking happened during the summer.”

McGann said they made changes to Meal-X was to deter students from eating in Slayter and instead choose to eat more meals in Huffman or Curtis.

She said, “we looked at the numbers, and Slayter was getting twice as much business as Curtis and Huffman combined.”

McGann said the dining halls were built to feed and accommodate more people than Slayter, and it was hard on the staff to try to feed 1,000 students a night in the small Slayter kitchens. “Slayter was made to function as a snack bar,” she said. “There’s not a lot of space to store fresh food, and it was not an efficient way to use the small space.”