Changes to meal exchange program cause confusion

Changes to Ithaca College’s meal exchange program from the 2024-25 academic year to the 2025-26 academic year have surprised students and student employees. Many students are confused about what meal exchange options are currently available and what each cafe serves.

The meal exchange program was implemented in Fall 2023 to reduce foot traffic in both the Terraces Dining Hall and Campus Center Dining Hall. Since its arrival, meal exchanges have given students the option of using their meal swipes for anything from paninis to açai bowls. Students enjoyed the variety of meal options, with the convenience of not having to leave their academic buildings.

Currently, the college offers five meal exchange locations: Campus Center Cafe, which was previously South Hill Sweets; Scribe Cafe within the Gannett Center Library; Vida Cafe located in the Center for Health Sciences; Eleven Wall Cafe located in the Dorothy D. and Roy H. Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise; and Towers Eatery located in the Towers Concourse.

In Fall 2025, each cafe still resides in its same location; however, not all offer meal exchange options anymore. Some locations have transitioned to a retail-only cafe where students are able to use Bomber Bucks as opposed to meal exchanges, where students can use meal swipes to pay for their food.

Towers Eatery now only offers a retail dinner option, open Sunday through Thursday from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. It was previously open Tuesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. until 11 p.m. with the addition of a meal exchange dinner option from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Towers Eatery was the only late-night meal exchange option on campus. Meal exchange breakfast and lunch is still offered.

Reginald Briggs, senior director of dining services, said that meal exchanges were introduced to decongest the dining halls, specifically the Campus Center Dining Hall. He said that before the addition of the meal exchange program, 60-68% of lunches were served in the Campus Center Dining Hall Monday through Friday. Currently, approximately 40-42% of lunches are served in Campus Center.

Briggs said the college will replace Towers Eatery’s late-night exchange service by transitioning Towers Concourse Market, a space that previously held vending machines, to an additional meal exchange cafe. The Market will be operating from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. from Tuesday through Sunday. It will serve ice cream, sandwiches and other pre-packaged food.

“I like it because it gets us an extra two hours of service,” Briggs said. “In time, we will develop a retail menu at Towers [Eatery]. So, fingers crossed it will have more dinner options available for you to order.”

Briggs said via email that the college aims to open Towers Concourse Market after Fall Break. He said the college is waiting on equipment, and there is still mechanical, electrical and plumbing work to be done in the space to sustain a cafe-style dining facility.

Instead of meal exchange paninis and other baked goods, the Dailies Cafe now only serves baked goods for purchase from 8 a.m. to noon. Briggs said there will not be a meal exchange option at Dailies Cafe in the foreseeable future.

Briggs said many of these changes occurred to account for the lack of space and volume of noise within each school’s cafe. Dailies Cafe resides near classrooms within Roy H. Park Hall, which can be distracting to students and professors during class time.

“The Park School was literally too busy,” Briggs said. “That lobby is not a very big space to begin with, and the school is always doing open houses and different meetings. … The volume was literally just too much.”

Briggs said that there was an attempt to move the paninis that were offered at Dailies Cafe to the Campus Center Cafe. He said the Campus Center Cafe’s facilities could not support the electricity needed to operate the panini presses. Instead of paninis, Campus Center Cafe has been serving regular sandwiches and other baked goods. Campus Center Cafe is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Jeffrey Golden, associate vice president of auxiliary services, said that the dining team is always trying to maintain a fresh dining program when discussing changes.

“We’re trying new ideas,” Golden said. “If a particular idea is working, we might try it in a different location. If a particular idea is not working, we may replace it with something else.”

Golden said that Campus Center Cafe’s change from South Hill Sweets was implemented to accommodate the change at Dailies Cafe. Without the Park School meal exchange, there was one less exchange option on campus. Golden said the Campus Center Cafe provided a space for another exchange option.

“We didn’t want to just get rid of the paninis [in the Park School],” Golden said. “There had to be some outlet for that because obviously we realized, apart from just the total number of available exchange locations, it was also a popular concept.”

Golden said that paninis will be sold at the cafe, while Briggs said that panini presses were not feasible in that space.

Eleven Wall Cafe, located in the Park Center for Business and Sustainable Enterprise, used to offer build-your-own sandwiches during the 2024-25 academic year. Starting Fall 2025, the cafe has transitioned to açai bowls, which were previously offered at Scribe Cafe within the Gannett Center.

Junior Jesus Luna has been an employee at Eleven Wall Cafe since Fall 2024. He said the changes were brought to his attention at the time of his first shift back in the fall. He said there was no formal announcement communicated to student employees specifying the changes to Eleven Wall Cafe, or any formal training on employees’ new positions.

“It was difficult trying to manage everything,” Luna said. “I was just frustrated that I wasn’t able to receive any formal training.”

Aneesa Williams, assistant manager of retail dining services, works closely with student employees to oversee several retail and meal exchange cafes on campus. She said student employees for Scribe Cafe were notified of the meal exchange changes with a welcome letter via email.

Williams said via email that employees at Eleven Wall Cafe did not receive a welcome letter because staffing for the cafe was not complete. Luna confirmed he received no communication.

“I think people were definitely a little surprised to see some of the changes,” Williams said. “We’ve had to work within a very small amount of time.”

Sophomore Eli Nashel said that the changes to Eleven Wall Cafe have been frustrating for him and other students.

“I can’t get my sub anymore,” Nashel said. “It’s very upsetting, and I know a lot of other people in the business school are upset by it. I know all around campus people are upset, on YikYak and conversations I’ve overheard.”

Senior Madi Arpin, student manager of Scribe Cafe, is a third-year Scribe employee. Arpin said that the library environment has been calmer this semester because many students used to come to enjoy the açai bowls offered at Scribe.

“There’s less going on because we don’t have the açai bowls,” Arpin said. “There were a lot of expectations for us and the staffing wasn’t matching that.”

Arpin said that moving açai bowls to the Business School made Scribe and the library less chaotic.

“The drinks and prepackaged food is much more manageable for us as a team,” Arpin said.

Luna said neither he nor his coworkers have made formal complaints about the lack of communication and training to the administration. He said many are unaware of who to express their concerns to, and if those complaints will lead to change.

Williams said there are lists of contacts in each cafe for students to ask for support and express concerns.

“That’s incredibly important to me to make sure that they know there’s plenty of support available,” Williams said. “We work very, very hard to just make sure that our student staff doesn’t feel stressed.”

Jesus Luna worked as a photographer and videographer for The Ithacan in Fall 2023.