Collegiate Times

Members of the Student Government Association leadership want to develop a plan that would connect students in the Oak Lane community holding more than one meal plan account with other off-campus consumers seeking a dining plan.

Organizations based in Oak Lane are required to sign the Special Purpose Housing Contract. Section two of the contract states that groups “will endeavor” to maintain 100 percent occupancy during the school year. If this goal is not met, the organization is charged the full housing fee, along with a meal plan base cost — $807 — for each vacancy.

Organizations decide how these costs are distributed, but they do occasionally fall onto individual Oak Lane residents. This is often the case if an individual buys out a double occupancy room to make it into a single.

With the extra base meal plan, students living in Oak Lane could pay at least $3,331 over the course of a year for their dining plans.

Currently, those attempting to sell their extra meal plan find their efforts less than successful.

Corbin DiMeglio, director of community relations for Tech’s Interfraternity Council and a member of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, said he noticed that by the time students looked to sell their plans, most other students had already purchased their own.

“People try to do it often,” DiMeglio said. “I’m not sure it always works.”

Jason Sarfati, a junior international business major and house supervisor for the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, said seven residents of the house have bought out their double-occupancy rooms to make them a single. Sarfati said the timing of the sales gives buyers leverage to bargain the plan’s price down with sellers to the effect of several hundred dollars.

“The best I’ve heard anybody getting is $500,” Sarfati said.

Rick Johnson, director of Tech’s Office of Housing and Dining Services, said the ability of Oak Lane, as an exclusive community, to remain fiscally independent was in line with a “fundamental sense of fairness.”

“Oak Lane is unique,” Johnson said. “That uniqueness should not be subsidized by those who ... don’t want to be a part of the Greek community.”

Johnson stressed that it was up to individual groups, not the university, to determine who foots the bill for the cost of the extra meal plans.

“We’re very surprised to hear we were the bad guys,” Johnson said. “(Organizations are) required to pay for the beds; how you figure that out is up to you.”

The current Special Purpose Housing Contract, which began in the fall 2008 semester, is set to expire following the second summer session of 2011.

The issue has caught the attention of leaders of the SGA. President Brandon Carroll said he hoped something could be arranged through Hokie Spa to allow off-campus students to purchase extra meal plans from Oak Lane students.

“The university should work to help the off-campus students to help them purchase these extra meal plans,” Carroll said.

SGA Vice President Shane McCarty said the proposed plan would “create a middle man for those who are off-campus to buy from those who are on campus.”

McCarty said meetings had been scheduled with dining administrators for later in the week to work out the details for such a program.

“This is still a conversation that has to be done,” McCarty said.

A version of this article appeared in the Feb 25 issue of the Collegiate Times.