Photo by Marie Meneses
For more than a decade, students have been vying for the option of off-campus meal points.
Thanks to the Student Government Association executive board, in collaboration with administration, Dining Services and Housing and Residence Life, students will have the option of signing up for the off-campus meal point pilot program next semester.
“As of right now, we need people to sign up in advance,” SGA president Demisse Selassie said. “We’re releasing a lot of the information before Thanksgiving break so that people can sit down with their families and discuss this over the dinner table. We need a pool of students who will opt into this in oder for it to get off the ground. If no one signs up, it can be detrimental to potentially implementing and incorporating this.”
Selassie said students will receive a link to create an account onto which they or their parents can transfer money, which will automatically be synced to the student ID cards to use at the off-campus locations. Besides a minimum amount and likely a maximum, students can determine exactly how much money they would like to put on their cards for the the off-campus locations. It would be beneficial for parents, too, Selassie said, because it would ensure their children are spending their parents’ money on food.
Off Campus Solutions, a sublet of Sodexo, is currently finding vendors. Selassie said OCS gave SGA a list of 60 to 80 local restaurants from which SGA chose their top 10, including favorites like MalibuYo, Chipotle, La Salsa, Ralphs and Lily’s. Nothing has yet been finalized, but Selassie said OCS hopes to have one or two vendors by Thanksgiving break and five by January.
SGA has incentivized the program to businesses by passing a resolution that they would purchase the ID card-reading machines for the first five vendors who sign up that agree to give discounts to students using their IDs.
Selassie said SGA has the option of passing a resolution to buy the machines for more businesses if there is a positive feedback. If vendors want to join the program but don’t want to give discounts, they have to buy the machines themselves, Selassie said.
“The issue with some of these places is that they’re corporations,” Selassie said. “We would have to go through the chain of command. But the small Ma and Pop shops will be more likely to sign since the owners or managers make the final decisions. But we’re still going to push for the corporations, and OCS is really good at what they do.”
Selassie said SGA has been trying to implement off-campus meal points for years because of student demand, but this year, the E-board started working on it earlier than usual: in May. “We wanted to come up with a plan that was feasible for both Sodexo and Pepperdine and that was also beneficial to the student body.”
There were several obstacles to overcome, according to Selassie. While forming the contracts, the parties had to consider legal issues concerning liability if something went wrong. Furthermore, Selassie said SGA didn’t want the program to damage Sodexo’s business and wanted to ensure that it would be beneficial to the students.
“We were able to see all three obstacles and found solutions for them,” he said.
Everyone involved has been supportive of SGA’s efforts, according to Selassie.
“Dining Services is excited for the Pepperdine University students and community,” Dining Services General Manager Randy Penwell wrote in an email. “I … commend [SGA], in particular Demisse Selassie, for their work and the energy they invested to develop a very complicated process with [OCS] and Pepperdine University, bringing this long stated goal closer to reality for their organization and constituents. Without these three groups working together this would not have been possible.”
Selassie said student feedback on SGA surveys and general word-of-mouth has been in favor of off-campus meal points for years. “We don’t know what to expect, but we trust in the student body. We’re going to market to the best of our ability to get this off the ground, but as long as we get positive feedback, then we expect it to be successful,” he said.
Selassie said that SGA is already discussing how the pilot program can be improved by incorporating it into the actual meal plan. “But there are an enormous amount of hurdles,” he said, “like financial aid, Pepperdine liability, fluctuating costs, rankings. It’s really sensitive.”
Sodexo could potentially be another vendor in the future also, Selassie said, so students could use their off-campus meal points on-campus if their points on their regular meal plan run out.
“It’s really important that we get the student body to opt in and for parents to support it. We want to see it incorporated into our meal plans, so it’s important that we get this off the ground,” Selassie said.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Follow Falon Opsahl on Twitter: @FalonGraphic
As published in the Nov. 14 issue of the Pepperdine Graphic.
