News in Brief: New meal plan for OC students, Progress on new SA database

8/27/09 7:00pm

New meal plan for OC students

Housing and Dining has changed the 2009-10 meal plans, allocating guest meals to on-campus students and extending Tetra points to off-campus students. Rice offers three meal plans for the 2009-10 school year. Students living on campus are required to purchase the on-campus meal plan, while off-campus students may purchase any of the three options: the on-campus meal plan, Plan OC 5 or the new 10-meal plan. Those students who opted to live in Historic Will Rice may purchase an experimental 10-meal plan.

Beginning this year, on-campus students will receive an additional five guest meals, along with their allotted weekly meals and 50 Tetra points, Meal Plan Administrator Gloria Aguirre said. Frank Rodriguez, Senior Director of H&D, said H&D provided the guest meals to students as a way to accommodate friends and family who visit on special occasions.

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"Part of the thinking is that the guest meals will be used for families during the families' week or homecoming, when you might have family or guests visiting," Rodriguez said.

Plan OC 5, the plan specifically for off-campus students, will include 50 Tetra points each semester, in addition to the five meals covered under the plan. Rodriguez said demand for Tetra points by off-campus students influenced the change.

"We get a lot of OC students who purchase more Tetra points than meal plans," Rodriguez said.

Some OC students said they will find the additional Tetra points useful.

"It's always nice to get as many student benefits as possible," Wiess junior Andres Goza said, "It's never a bad thing to have extra Tetra points in case you run out of cash."

H&D is using students in Historic Will Rice as a pilot for a 10-meal plan, which may be made available to a wider range of students if it is successful.

Earlier this week, a miscommunication between H&D staff resulted in students receiving a balance of 25 Tetra points, rather than the regular 50 tetra points. Rodriguez expects the issue to be resolved within a few days.

The price for an on-campus meal plan is $1860 per semester, $1,300 per semester for the 10-meal plan, and $700 per semester for Plan OC 5. Further information can be found on H&D's Web site at food.rice.edu.

-Josh Rutenberg

Progress on new SA database

In an effort to fulfill one of his campaign goals of making the Student Association more transparent, SA President Patrick McAnaney has created a database to organize all current SA projects.

McAnaney, a Brown College senior, met with last year's outgoing SA senators to hear their feedback on ways to improve the SA. He said one of the biggest problems was that projects lose momentum after changeover. "If [a project] doesn't get finished, it is usually forgotten," he said.

Leaders will add their projects to the database for all students to see. Set up as a forum, the site will allow students to view projects and then comment on them.

"Having regular channels to collaborate on a variety of projects should work well to create positive feedback," McAnaney said.

McAnaney said he hopes the database will improve the SA's institutional memory and hold project leaders accountable.

"This will be a way to inform students, get feedback from them and help keep our members honest," he said.

Planning for the database began last semester. Director of Technology Zachary Fedorko began organizing the database over the summer.

Fedorko, a Brown College sophomore, said McAnaney asked him to design the database to mirror the other forums on the SA Web site.

"I integrated it into the SA Web site, following the style of the rest of the site," he said. "[It] uses the SA Web site's pre-existing functionality."

McAnaney said that he does not anticipate adding too many past projects to the database. Current topics listed on the forum include the iTunesU and trayless dining projects. Fedorko added that these projects were cataloged by senators as "seed projects" to be referenced as examples by other senators and members of the executive council.

McAnaney said the new database page will enable the SA to have a more productive year.

"Our two major goals ... were to increase the number of committee projects and improve channels of communication," he said.

The database, which details all the senators' current projects, new student representatives and SA committees, was launched Aug. 13 and is an open log for students to view at sa.rice.edu.

The University Office Updates Web site, also created this summer at sa.rice.edu, will feature update notifications from an array of campus departments, such as academic advising and the faculty senate, McAnaney said. He also said the site will serve as an engine for more formal communication with the various departments.

-Jaclyn Youngblood

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