I went to Tufts University last week to visit my best friend, and at the end of our visit we ate in the University’s dining hall. It was a great experience for someone who is used to living at Harbor Point and going to Shaws 3 or 4 times a week to keep food in their apartment. More than 1000 students live within a 10 minute walk of campus and they are in the truest sense on their own, forced to grow up faster than your average college student. A meal plan would be one of the best decisions UMB ever made, and it would be a financial boost to the university and make it more attractive to prospective applicants.   Not having a meal plan is just another one of the many ways UMB ignores it’s students who choose to live near the campus. At student welcome day a shuttle bus takes you from the T stop to Harbor Point and back to the campus, but in reality the bus doesn’t stop at HP and you are stuck walking. Basically you are on your own from the time the semester starts and the school provides you with no security nor any opportunity to make friends with other students living with you. The least the school could do is give their students a cafeteria that is open at night and a way of paying for it that’s built into your tuition. After a full day of classes ending at 5:15, going to Shaw’s to pick up dinner is a huge hassle, especially considering I have to walk 15 minutes back to my apartment with my arms full of groceries. 18 is too young to have live completely on your own with no assistance.    A typical college dining hall is a buffet type establishment where students can swipe a card and eat as they please. They switch up food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and they also switch up the menu daily to provide different food to the students. It is a place where friends can meet up after class before going back to their dorms (or apartments in UMB’s case) for the evening. If UMB is planning on going through with their master plan then dorms will be built here, and where are those students going to eat? A meal plan here is the next logical step towards eventually becoming a major D-1 school, it will make our students lives much better and that is the start of the eventual expansion we’ve been hearing about for ages.