Bloom-flation
/Returning StFX students arrived back on campus this year to a most unwelcome surprise: the wildly popular ‘One Swipe’ program at the Bloomfield Café had been silently changed. This program allowed students to use one of their meal swipes to purchase a Bloomfield Burger or a Rita Wrap, which comes with a drink and small soup.
This September, students discovered some changes to the program, none of which were communicated to students prior to paying thousands of dollars on meal plans. As of the first week of classes this fall, the StFX website’s dining page states “The ONE-SWIPE Program is a Bloomfield Café exclusive program that allows you to use your meal swipes on select meal combo options between 11 AM-2 PM, Monday-Friday". Sodexo's StFX web page had a similar “The exclusive One Swipe Program allows you to use your meal swipe between 11:00am and 2:00pm to get a healthy and convenient lunch from our selected combo meal options”. Neither of these mention a new limit of 3 swipes per week was put in place, what had last year been 10 (2 a day 5 days a week).
J.T. Campbell, a second-year student from O’Regan, purchased the unlimited meal plan. He had intended to use Bloomfield up to five days a week, as he had been allowed to last year. “If I had been informed that they were altering [the meal plan] I would have preferred to use the money I spent on other food.” J.T. laments having to use his DCB to buy food at Bloomfield—due to the new limit—on top of his meal swipe.
Bob Hale, Director of Ancillary services at StFX, says not informing students before classes “was a mistake on [his] part”. He says that over the summer several different alterations were considered to the One-Swipe Program to ensure its continued availability amid rising inflation. The administration settled on keeping One-Swipe with an additional extra three-dollar charge. A ‘homestyle’ station was added at Bloomfield that uses One Swipe without the added cost. Hale points out that the vast majority of Universities in Canada have ditched similar programs in recent years, and that StFX and Sodexo were committed to saving it due to its popularity with students. Not informing students, says Hale, was a regrettable “oversight”.
Hale and Tim Hierlihy, Sodexo General Manager, named several of Sodexo’s other programs on Campus. Too Good To Go is a mobile app that sells surplus food in ‘surprise bags’ at 1/3 the original price, now available at Bloomfield. The CANO program is free to students and encourages sustainability by allowing users to “borrow well designed re-usable food containers” and rewarding them with points. Named after former Sodexo General Manager Kevin Fraser, Kevin’s Food Corner “is a free, confidential service accessible to any student who needs some assistance with the ever-increasing cost of groceries.”
