by Rachel Barter ’27 on January 22, 2026
Opinion - Campus
As an upperclassman or even a sophomore living in on-campus apartments or in suites, such as McCarthy Hall, you have multiple options for which meal plan you want to sign up for. There is a two-week window at the beginning of each semester for you to reduce or cancel your meal plan depending on your housing situation and meal plan requirements. As a junior living in an apartment on campus, I am not required to have a meal plan, so I reserve the right to select a meal plan and test it out for just under two weeks before deciding whether to adjust my selection or not. Similarly, if you are living in an off-campus building and currently have selected a meal plan that is higher than the required plan, then you should have received an email asking if you would like to reduce or cancel your meal plan.
Although I am grateful that we are allowed this two-week grace period to change our minds and adjust our dining plans to meet our specific needs and habits, as someone who has reduced my meal plan in the fall of 2025, it is important to note that even if you lower your meal plan, you may not be lowering your tuition bill. In fact, I had originally selected the 14 Meal Plan and decided to lower it to the Friar 165 Block meal plan during this grace period and this increased my tuition bill by $41.52, despite the 14 Meal Plan being $240 more expensive than the Friar 165 Block meal plan. Instead of crediting me the $3,440 semester cost of the 14 Meal Plan and charging me the $3,200 of my new Friar 165 Block plan, PC reduced my reimbursement to $3,158.48 to account for the portion of my meal plan that I had used in that less than two-week window.
In my opinion, it would make sense for the Office of Residence Life or the Bursar’s Office, depending who deals with this, to deduct what I had used from my new meal plan rather than from my old meal plan. This would leave me to pay the difference and not use up my new meal plan, essentially paying for 18 weeks of a meal plan and studying at PC for only 16 weeks out of those 18. For instance, if I used 20 meal swipes and $20 in Friar Bucks, I would have expected my new meal plan to have 145 meal swipes rather than 165, and $305 Friars Bucks rather than $325. Instead, I was charged an additional $281.52 to cover what I had used and an additional $3,200 for the Friar Block 165 plan, which I had already decided would last me a full semester. Otherwise I would not have decided to lower my meal plan.
Overall, if you are considering lowering your meal plan, it could actually cost you more money than remaining on your current plan, especially if the two plans are close in price. In fact, even if you lower your meal plan to an option that is significantly cheaper, you cannot count on the entire reimbursement.