Stealing is still wrong, right?

Just like every other student, I can pay for my own food and know to do so when I’m hungry. It shouldn’t take a Shirley Mullen to come to that conclusion. But for some reason, students are required to pay for their own meals in advance, like we’re too stupid to eat when we’re hungry and need the motivation of “I’ve already paid for it” to get us to get a meal.

Not that it does. If you really wanted to starve yourself, there's nothing they can do, but they still get the money. That way everyone wins! You starve like you want, and they get paid, like they want, win-win! What's better is that those that live in the dorm are ‘more stupider’ than those in CLO’s. That’s why they’re required to be on a higher meal plan meal plan.

This is the policy that has personally cost me more than $500 wasted dollars.

Next time you're at breakfast, (ha-ha, yeah right, I know) take a look around. 50 people, max, but to be generous, let’s say 100. Freshmen are required to be on the 21 meal plan. That’s 15 weeks, $1,610 a plan, and $5.11 a meal. Assuming that no upperclassmen are on this plan (which isn’t the case), 300 people are paying for breakfast and not getting it. That means that every morning, Pioneer is making 1,533 that they don't earn. That translates into $161,000 every semester of unearned profit, 1/3 of a million a year.

Freddie L. once complained to me that students who take food from the cafeteria were like those who steal a book from the bookstore. Which it is, if ‘stealing’ means you get what you pay for. If I pay for 3 books, I either get those 3 books or I get my money back. Maybe the cafeteria should be like the bookstore. Whatever you do, just don’t have a ‘steal from students’ policy and call it paying for the rights to maybe come and possibly eat unless you forget, miss a meal or have already eaten. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take two doctorates to realize that ‘thou shall not steal’ applies to tHou-ghton College, too.