New School students have been able to use school identification cards since December for payment at selected merchants near the school buildings. The school announced the new program through a mass email sent to a segment of the student community last semester, but very few students seem to have taken advantage of the deal.
Two of the selected merchants, Ben’s Pizza on MacDougal Street and BLT Burger on 6th Avenue, have reported that they see very few students using their cards each week, and at times the cards have not worked.
“I did not know that we could use our cards, and then some friends told me about it, but theirs didn’t work,” Nicco Palazzi, a freshman at Parsons, told The Free Press.
In order to use the cards at the selected merchants, students must add money to their cards using the MyNewSchool website. This feature is called Newcardcash and can be used as a prepaid debit card. It is a way for students and their parents to know directly where their money is going.
William Carty, director of Campus Card Services, explained that many students confuse Campus Cash with the meal plan, aka Dining Dollars, which are normally associated with student housing. Carty said that some students do not understand the difference between the two programs.
“Dining Dollars is for on-campus use only, while Newcardcash can be used both on and off campus,” Carty said. “We are working to better communicate this [to students].”
The new feature is the result of the school’s collaboration with a marketing and customer service company called Off Campus Solutions (OCS). The company acts like a debit card processor, and receives a small transaction fee. Carty explained that the program should raise the university’s visibility in the neighborhood.
“The increased traffic to these merchants helps them with additional exposure to a population who may have not been aware of or frequented their establishments previously,” Carty said.
For now, the program is only introduced to a small segment of the student population to see how often the students would use their cards and will soon be available to the rest of the community, according to Carty and Tom Deloge. This is the first trial of its kind at The New School.
Additional reporting by Tiffanie Drayton.
http://www.newschoolfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/InfoGraphic.pdf
Charlotte is majoring in Journalism + Design at Eugene Lang College and graduated high school in Bamberg, Germany. Her father is a soldier so she grew up moving around a lot. Outside of her interest in journalism, she is an aspiring novelist & screenplay writer who dabbles in acting. Charlotte loves reading, writing, road trips, red wine, videogames, music, sketch comedy and tennis.
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