By 2011, all University of Mississippi students will be required to purchase $200 worth of flex dollars each semester.
All Delta State University students are also required to purchase $100 of flex dollars each semester. Meal plans are mandatory for all resident students at the University of Southern Mississippi, Jackson State University and Mississippi College.
Ole Miss’s manager of contractual services Cathy Tidwell said all freshmen who started at Ole Miss since the fall of 2007 will have to purchase the $200 of flex money each semester.
“The first year of implementation, which is the fall of 2008, includes all of our freshman and sophomore students,” Tidwell said. “Next year we will include our juniors, and the following year we will include all undergraduates. Graduate and law students are not required [to purchase a meal plan].”
She said the mandatory flex dollars would help students budget and let them keep their money on their ID cards, rather than carrying around money.
“Some locations, such as vending machines, do not accept credit or debit cards,” She said. “This gives the students the freedom of having that money so it is readily available.”
Tidwell said the flex and Ole Miss Express, an optional declining balance spending account, have been popular with the students.
“Our students have found they really like to have the freedom to use those cards while on campus and off campus,” she said. “Our Ole Miss Express is readily accepted at over 30 merchants off campus and our students use this very often.”
Assisstant vice president for student affairs Bill Broyles said Mississippi State University’s requirement that all freshmen live on campus and purchase a meal plan is part of an effort to work toward ensuring academic success for freshmen students.
“What we were trying to do was provide a way that the students would get settled in campus better and get more involved in the campus and build that community, in an effort to help with academic success, retention and persistence to graduation,” Broyles said. “The freshmen will come back as sophomores, juniors and seniors and hopefully graduate.”
Executive food service director Jason Nall said Mississippi State’s freshmen requirements were decided two years ago when Aramark and MSU became partners.
“If you look statistically school by school across the country, when there’s more of a community, a mandatory living requirement a mandatory meal requirement, it greatly increases the freshman retention rate of coming back and being successful,” he said. “From a university standpoint, the goal was all about building a community on campus, retaining students and helping students be successful.”
Nall said it is always the university’s decision whether there will be mandatory meal plans or not.
“We’re just partnered to operate food services,” Nall said. “The university makes that decision. It’s not an Aramark decision.”
Broyles said there are no plans to implement any further mandatory meal requirements.
“We have no plans to change,” he said. “Of course we may modify the meal plans to better suit students’ needs, but as far as expanding the requirement on who has to participate, we have no plans to do that at all.”
Tidwell said there has been some controversy over flex dollars.
“I think the controversy over this is that possibly some students were assessed when they should not have been and we have credited many of our third-semester sophomores who were assessed in error,” she said. “Most of our students who were supposed to be assessed were notified well in advance and most of them find that they enjoy the freedom of using that flex plan.”
Sophomore software engineering major Andrew Glasscock said putting money into flex dollars is a double-edged sword.
“It’s basically putting my money in a hole and then I have to eat my way out of the hole, literally,” Glasscock said. “I can kind of see the usefulness if you were required to put $400 a year in but at the same time, it’s not something everyone would want to do.”