Plum Market back in the good ol’ days. Photo by Jonathan Wang.

SILAS OWENS | OPINION COLUMNIST | szowens@butler.edu 

Picture this: it’s 11 p.m. on a Tuesday and you have a paper due tomorrow that you really shouldn’t have procrastinated on. You’ve been working for three hours straight and realize that you’re hungry. It’s the perfect excuse for a break, so you go to A-Town Market — formerly our beloved Plum Market —  and come back ten minutes later with a bag of buffalo pretzel crisps and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked. It’s exactly the college life everyone told you to expect.

Fast forward to Sunday: It’s the morning after a long night of making good decisions with your friends. The Sunday scaries have kicked into high gear and it’s time to caffeinate and lock in on your homework. Fortunately, there’s a Starbucks on campus, with plenty of study space, chock full of students in the exact same situation as you.

Students like me who were on campus before this year don’t have to imagine any of this. It was our reality and life was beautiful, but this year our weekend options were further diminished and our late-night options were completely taken away. 

A-Town Market now serves made-to-order food from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. and closes completely at 10 p.m. on most days. On Saturdays, it closes completely at 4 p.m. Last year students could order hot food from breakfast time until 10 p.m., and retail was open until midnight every day. 

The campus Starbucks hours have also been significantly reduced. It now closes at 6 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. and is completely closed on Sundays.

Issues with the new dining hours run deeper than the complaints of people like me who want an apple crisp oat milk macchiato on a Sunday. Many students with busy schedules now struggle to find time to get a meal on campus.

Sophomore dance major Tatiana Schmidt has a busy class and rehearsal schedule that doesn’t align well with the new dining hours, making it difficult to get food. 

“[Myself] and a lot of the other dancers struggle to get meals, especially on weekends when we have rehearsals all day,” Schmidt said. “Plum will close at four on Saturday when we go until five, and A-Town doesn’t have great options, especially on weekends.”

On weekdays Schmidt and other dancers get out of class and rehearsal as late as 9 p.m., when the last dining option, A-Town Market, closes. 

Schmidt filled out a feedback survey about her issues and was impressed by Bon Appétit’s willingness to listen to student concerns. She suggested that other concerned students also bring up their issues.

“I just scrolled to the bottom [of Butler Bon Appétit’s website] and there was [an option to] submit a survey,” Schmidt said. “I didn’t think it was gonna go anywhere … But then [someone with Bon Appétit] emailed me … and then we met and she was great.”

If other students have concerns about hours or other dining issues, giving direct feedback to Butler Bon Appétit — like Schmidt did — is an important step to take. Nobody with authority can consider solutions until they hear about the problems that need to be solved.

Mauro Manzano, a sophomore theater and creative media entertainment double major, has had similar issues with access to meals. He has classes for most of the day and long rehearsals in the evening.

“Most of the time I can’t go [to a dining hall] because of my schedule right now,” Manzano said. “I’ve been here for about four weeks and I’ve used 11 flex meals and two [block] meals … A lot of my castmates, too, have been talking about how they can’t eat … When we have a break in rehearsal we have to go to the vending machine [to] grab at least a snack or something.”

If first-year and sophomore students are required to pay for a meal plan, that meal plan absolutely needs to accommodate the schedules of the busiest students because otherwise, those students have to pay thousands of dollars a year for nothing.

Charlie Biggs, a sophomore math and economics double major, has experienced the issues that the dining hours pose to students in Greek houses with supplementary meal plans.

“[With] our Greek meal plan we [are served] lunch and dinner every day except weekends … and lunch and dinner during the week are only at very specific times,” Biggs said. “My schedule is pretty unique in the sense that I have class all day, and then work … so finding food is a lot easier for [other students].”

The Butler Bon Appétit website advertises voluntary meal plans like the one Biggs has as “a perfect option for Greek life students who need weekend or late night options to supplement their house meal plan.” This was true in previous years before these options were axed. 

Butler says they want to be a competitive campus but this change is a big turn-off compared to other similar-sized private universities in Indiana. UIndy consistently has hot food until 10 p.m. and convenience store items until midnight. Valparaiso has hot food until 10 p.m. DePauw, also run by Bon Appétit, has daily late-night dining until 11 p.m. Indiana Wesleyan has hot food until 11 p.m. daily and a Trader Joe’s open until 11:30. 

Student meal plans are expensive, too. With the cheapest resident meal plan, students pay $3,850 per semester for 220 meals and 600 flex dollars. If you subtract the flex dollars and do the math, the cost per meal comes out to be $14.77. 

However, if a student only ends up using 200 of their meals, which don’t carry over across semesters, they pay $16.25 per meal. Compare that to $10.35 — $13 with guac — students could pay for a bowl with steak at Chipotle. Also, consider that it costs $6.99 to buy chicken tenders and fries at A-Town Market with a debit card.  

In previous years students — including myself — could justify the cost of the meal plans because they came with convenience and access to food at almost any time of day. However, this year — although the cost of the cheapest required meal plan has gone up by more than $100 per semester — the accessibility and convenience of campus food options for students have been reduced to the point that some struggle to find all the meals that they need. Butler should utilize its meal plans to increase access to food for students so that they would choose to have one if it wasn’t required. Instead, it increased prices for students and reduced available dining hours. It claims to be “changing what it means to be a university,” but is headed in the wrong direction.