Students on college dining plans don’t always eat all the food they’ve signed up for, and many often end each semester losing the money they have left on their meal cards.
Some New Jersey lawmakers are hoping to redirect the money for those lost meals to hungry people around the state.
But, a proposed law to accomplish the transfer is not fully cooked yet, according to members of the Assembly Higher Education Committee who debated the idea at a hearing last week. They voted 7-0 in favor of the legislation, though lawmakers said it would likely have to be amended.
The bill, A2166, would direct money from unused student meals at the state’s public universities to New Jersey food banks. An identical measure, S2234, was introduced in the state Senate earlier this year.
A “New Jersey Emergency Meal Fund” would be created in the Department of State for college students to voluntarily donate any unused money or meals on their dining plans at the end of each semester, under the proposed law. That money would go to the New Jersey Federation of Food Banks to pay for food for the state’s food banks.
But, some college officials are reluctant to sign off on the plan.
“The spirit and the intent of the bill are admirable. All of us support trying to address food insecurity, which we all face on college campuses,” Morganne Dudzinski, interim executive director of the New Jersey Association of State Colleges and Universities, told the Assembly committee. “We would love to see any unused meals or dollars kept on our campuses if possible, for our students.”
However, college contracts with food vendors include the assumption that 30% to 40% of meals will not be purchased, Dudzinski said. So, it would be difficult for colleges to simply transfer the money for unused meals to food banks.
New food vendor contracts could include funds set aside for a food bank or campus food pantry, she said.
Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, one of the sponsors of the Senate bill, said she will be hosting a meeting that will include Assembly sponsor William Moen, D-Camden, to hash out campus concerns. The meeting will help legislators “to be sure that we’re not being wasteful with food, or with money and resources on our college campuses, when in fact there’s students who are food insecure, right in those same spaces,” Ruiz said Wednesday.
It is unclear exactly how many meal plan swipes — a reference to students passing a meal plan card over a reader in a dining hall to record the food they eat on their dining plan — remain unused at the end of each semester at New Jersey’s public colleges and universities.
College dining plans can be pricey. On Rutgers University’s New Brunswick campus, for example, meal plans range from $1,015 per semester for 50 meals for commuter students to $3,260 per semester for 285 meals for students who live in residence halls and expect to eat all their meals on campus.
Rutgers University spokeswoman Dory Devlin said the school, which has the largest number of students in the state, has worked with the bills’ sponsors in the past and “will continue to do so to help them achieve their goals of addressing food insecurity among college students.”
Andrew Mees, a spokesman for Montclair State University, said campus officials support the meal swipe bill, but they hope the donated money leftover from dining plans will return to campus.
“Food insecurity is an issue for a significant portion of our student population and we have developed a series of on-campus programs to address the issue,” he said.
The Montclair State efforts include a Food Champion program that makes leftover meals from on-campus events immediately available to students. The state’s Hunger-Free NJ program funds the use of sustainable to-go containers that students can use to take the leftover meals. The school’s food pantry serves up to 500 students monthly, Mees said.
Last year, the state committed $1.5 million to fight food insecurity on campuses by offering Hunger-Free Campus grants to cover a staff person to help students apply for food stamps, develop a “Swipe Out Hunger” student meal credit sharing program and provide food pantries.
Under the proposed law to create the new system for students to donate their unused meal plan money to food banks, colleges would have to develop a way to verify how much money is left on a student’s meal plan and transfer the funds to the New Jersey Emergency Meal Fund.
To become law, the plan would need to be approved by both the full Senate and Assembly, then be signed by Gov. Phil Murphy.
Stories by Tina Kelley
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Tina Kelley may be reached at tkelley@njadvancemedia.com.