At Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, students can use their meal plans to buy groceries, food and even haircuts at select off-campus locations. According to Brian Dawson, associate dean of Housing and Residential Life, Pepperdine has never implemented such a plan, but they have explored the option of allowing meal points to be used at local restaurants like Chipotle and Chick-fil-A.
“Caf points cannot be used off-campus at this point,” Dawson said. “However, this is an issue SGA has been looking into for many years. There have been different initiatives by students to the administration at Pepperdine [saying], ‘Hey, we would like you to explore that.’”
“Students in my class and my area asked about using points at Chipotle, knowing that some colleges have dining options at various popular food chains,” Kalinkewicz said. “They were aware that LMU, who use Sodexo just like Pepperdine, allows for some of their meal points, not all of them, to be used at off-campus food vendors, including the Chipotle in Marina Del Rey.”
According to Kalinkewicz, the suggestion to provide such a program is not new.
“I know that SGA was working on something at the end of last year or over the summer and that there have been various initiatives since I was a student to try to create off-campus options,” Kalinkewicz said. “What I know in terms of making this a reality is that everything needs to be student-driven to achieve being able to use points off-campus. If there is enough student response (petitions, comment cards, etc.), that would indicate to the university that this is important to students and it would improve their college experience.”