When I enrolled as a freshman in 2024, The New School had mandatory meal plans, promising convenience for all first-year students. What they failed to mention was that this convenience costs thousands of dollars — often for food that goes uneaten.

According to The New School’s official meal plan site, students on the Two Meal Plan pay $3,110 per semester, which includes $2,670 in Dining Dollars and $440 in Dining Dollars Plus. Only the latter can be used off campus or on Grubhub, meaning it disappears almost instantly. Ironically, it’s the only part of the plan that actually makes sense.

My remaining balance just sits there, mocking me. I can’t downgrade, transfer funds, or spend them anywhere remotely practical — like Trader Joe’s. When the year ends, whatever is left simply vanishes, along with any lingering trust in the school’s idea of financial responsibility.

For students living in Stuyvesant Park Residence and Loeb Hall — both proudly free of dining halls — “Dining Dollars” have become a punchline more than a perk. As a former resident of Stuy Park with only morning classes, I’d grab lunch at the University Center before heading back to the dorms. By dinner, I wasn’t about to trek across Manhattan in the cold, so I cooked at home with my own money. Which is funny, because Dining Dollars are also my money — just money I have no control over.

Mid-semester, I realized I could not use it all. Since I did not have a valid exemption, I was stuck. I forfeited nearly $3,000, even after donating nonperishables and buying lunch for upperclassmen through the “Sugar Mamas Feed Sugar Babies” group chat, a student-run group chat where people tried to get rid of their leftover balances.

That was the cost of an entire semester of food, gone. Now that I live closer to campus, it stings even more knowing that money could have fed me for another year. And, like me, many students share the same frustration with a plan that seems to benefit everyone except the people paying for it.

Netri Shah, a sophomore in interior design who lived in Stuyvesant Park Residence last year, tried to get her meal plan changed. Because of her allergies and religious dietary restrictions, she often ate the same two or three things every day. Even after buying food in bulk and covering meals for friends, she still had about $900 left unspent at the end of the year.

When she tried to downgrade her plan, because she “saw no point in continuing to pay for meals [she] wouldn’t consume,” she was subjected to endless emails until she was finally told to upload a doctor’s note and another note from her temple confirming her dietary restrictions. “I understand the allergy note,” she said, “but I think the note from my temple was absurd. I don’t see why I would need to prove my religion to spend less of my own money.”

Netri practices Jainism, which prohibits eating meat, eggs, mushrooms, and gelatin — basically most fast or pre-prepared food. She also said the process felt inconsistent. “I have a Hindu friend that requested an accommodation and she got it easily with no questions asked. Her restrictions are simply that she is a vegetarian, no allergies,” she added.

“I feel like they stole my money,” said Coral Song, another Stuyvesant resident and a sophomore studying communication design. Even after eating two meals a day, she and her friends couldn’t finish their balances. To avoid losing the money, they bought boxes of bottled water in bulk, hauling them home. She estimated spending another $150 on Uber rides just to transport everything. “I wish we had an option between one, two, and three [meal plans],” she added. 

By the final weeks of school, the UC dining hall turns into a pre-finals apocalypse. Students race to spend their balances, hauling cereal boxes, instant ramen, and anything that could outlive the summer.

When the system did not work, students didn’t wait for a fix — they made one. The “Sugar Mamas Feed Sugar Babies” chat became an underground economy of kindness, where first-years used up balances before they vanished. Someone would send a message asking if anyone was available to buy food, and minutes later, another student would swipe for them.

Behind it was Frugalicious Mamas, founded by Pepi Ng and Angie Li, and now co-managed by Nanditha Paila: a student-run account that shares free food and resources on campus. They even turned leftover balances into end-of-semester food drives with City Harvest. “It would be wonderful if there were a more official, school-supported way to transfer dining dollars,”Paila said. For now, students have built their own system — one that actually feeds people.

Between forcing oneself to spend unwanted money and pretending the school isn’t pocketing the rest, the rules around meal plans at TNS feel less like student dining and more like a five-course meal in red tape.

Even after buying nonperishables in bulk, I wonder if anyone actually consumes everything they hoarded. For a school that prides itself on sustainability and creative problem-solving, this system seems to encourage neither.

Maybe the meal plan isn’t a scam. Maybe it’s The New School’s way of teaching us the true meaning of sunk cost. Either way, it’s a subscription we can’t cancel — and somehow, the less we eat, the more it eats us.

A previous version of this article’s headline incorrectly stated a source’s name as Nandu Paila. The correct version states her name as Nanditha Paila.