When swiping into an ASU dining hall, students are greeted with a plethora of options. There are stations for Mexican food, pizza, salads and more — but for students with food allergies, those options narrow quickly.
Where students without dietary restrictions get free reign in dining halls, students with allergies are forced to navigate a minefield of possible food options and confused servers. Only one station is safe: True Balance. This station is free from the top nine most common food allergies but is not always open and has limited options compared to the other stations.
However, eliminating meal swipes would allow students who cannot use the majority of stations in dining halls to only pay for food they can eat.
Logan Higgins, a senior studying political science and human and family development, is a community assistant (CA) who was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease. She is now having to navigate her meal plan with dietary restrictions for the first time.
"The few times I've had things with gluten and gotten sick it's because I've asked," Higgins said. "I haven't eaten at the True Balance station, but I've asked at other stations and they’ll be like 'yeah, this doesn't have gluten,' and then it turns out it did."
ASU has a combination system for its meal plans, offering both meal swipes and dining dollars to students. Meal swipes allow students to swipe their Sun Card and get full access to any of the ASU dining halls across each of the four campuses. Dining dollars, known as Maroon and Gold dollars, are usable at restaurants throughout the University, including franchises like Starbucks, Chick-fil-A and Qdoba.
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"Before I was Celiac I had a lot of dining hall options and a lot of M&G options," Higgins said. "So for the normal person, I think the meal swipes are fine, but I think maybe if you have an allergy, being able to convert that or figure something out would be a lot more helpful."
At a university that requires all of its first-year students living on-campus to have a meal plan, the options should be more expansive for students with dietary restrictions. There should be a more equitable option for all students.
"I don't have a meal plan," said Hailey Connor, a sophomore studying global management. "I thought it was too expensive and there was no way I was gonna waste all my money on food that I wasn't going to eat."
Other state colleges like Oregon State University have moved away from the meal swipe system. OSU uses their M&G equivalent for everything, including food offered at stations in their dining halls. Instead of swiping in, students pick what they want and pay on their way out.
"If I had M&G I would just spend it on actual food," Connor said. "There was no way I was gonna pay thousands of dollars for food that I got at my high school."
Different campuses have different food options, which creates a unique experience for each dining hall. Students within Barrett, The Honors College, are allowed their own dining hall separate from the rest.
"I have access to the Barrett dining hall," Will Green, a junior studying accounting, said. "So I'd mainly be there or over at Pitchforks ... and I enjoyed it."
Eliminating meal swipes would not only benefit students with allergies but also the general student population. Students would be able to make more specific food choices and only pay for what they want.
"I think the big thing with the meal swipes is you go in and you can eat however much you want," Green said.
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Rather than eating a salad for the price of a full meal, students would be able to just buy a salad. Only using M&G would cut down on unused meal swipes because M&G can be used on both food and non-food items at locations like Starbucks and the P.O.D. Markets.
Dining halls can currently be accessed using M&G or normal money as well as meal swipes, so switching over completely should not be a massive shift. The University already has experience using the same system; it would just need to be changed.
This process may cost the University and Aramark some money upfront, as some students may choose to use the dining halls less if they have other options, but in the end, ASU's job is to provide for its students. Assuming responsibility for the health of the communities it serves is written into ASU's charter, and health starts with what we eat.
Editor's note: The opinions presented in this column are the author's and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
Edited by Senna James, Abigail Beck and Natalia Jarrett.
Reach the reporter at allipper@asu.edu and follow @lippert_audrey on X.
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Audrey is a sophomore studying journalism and mass communication with a minor in Spanish. This is her first semester with The State Press. She has also worked at Blaze Radio.
