Issue should be resolved tomorrow, no need for further discussion.

If you don't mind, what are the costs of the meals for students at A&M? The university I just left charged $9 per meal, didn't matter which one. It was the same price for students or faculty or visitors or whomever. The catering company was Sodexo.

Not sure about the cost, but I will check with him.

Have him contact COL Starnes, Corps Operations, and he can fix this for him. This is NOT the first time this has happened, and we have been able to fix this every time before.

I highly recommend that rather than try to resolve this on Tex Ags, that you have your son contact Corps Operations. We resolve issues like this all the time, with a lot less emotion or angst on your part.

Any further questions about this or any matter, please feel free to contact me at (979)845-2811.

Thanks for your support of our Corps!

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If you don't mind, what are the costs of the meals for students at A&M? The university I just left charged $9 per meal, didn't matter which one. It was the same price for students or faculty or visitors or whomever. The catering company was Sodexo.

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I think about 5-6 years ago each meal was worth 6.50 or 7. But I can't recall exactly. A couple years ago I think A&M dining services handed over operations to an outside vendor, or did some big shake up to improve quality, and I think they require all on-campus students to buy meal plans now (at least in their first year). Anyways, according to their website, the "best value" meal plan averages to $8.70 a meal.

But that's a meal at a cafeteria style dining hall, or a set menu you can choose from at a more fast food style place. Like when I was there you could get 2 slices of pizza, a fountain drink, and either a piece of fruit or a cookie for 1 meal plan. Or you could buy stuff individually if you liked. You could also cash out the value of a meal plan at the little convenience stores on campus and buy stuff like lunchables, gatorade, smoothies, etc.


And unless stuff has changed, I think I'd prefer to have meals not be counted as guest meals, but just regular meals. Either way you're losing the meals out of your total, but you're limited to 5 guest meals per semester now (we used to be allowed 2 a week, I think, although noone cared).

Meal plans have always been a complete scam. Just like forcing cadets to buy a football pass.

General, Thank you for your assistance in the matter, I will have him contact Col. Starnes tomorrow. Again Thank you. I know that you were working hard with PMC to get the cannon issue resolved and for now, it seems like it has been taken care of. This past weekend it worked out great, again thanks for the help with my issue as well as resolving the problem with the cannon. Keep up the good work.

Glad to help! This kind of thing doesn't just happen to the cadets - its happens to other students on meal plans also. We are always ready to help our cadets that have problems like this.

Thanks for your support of our Corps!

Title seems over the top but anyway, here's my experience from dining at Sbisa this Monday for lunch.

The cost was $9. Now, you could eat anything and everything in the shop for $9 but, that still seemed a little high to me. I didn't get the exact number but it sounded like breakfast might be $7 and supper might be $10. Anyway, my non-reg daughter was able to charge my meal against her meal plan.

Sbisa has been totally remodeled. I don't know if some of this varies but what I saw was a Mexican line, a Pizza line, a Salad line, a Sandwich line, a Stir-Fry Wok line and there were maybe one or two more lines. If the queue wasn't so long, I would have done the Stir-Fry Wok line. Instead I just took the Mexican line because I couldn't really justify paying $9 for Pizza or a Sandwich.

There was a variety of fountain drinks and there were plenty of places to sit and eat and even study for extended periods of time. Probably 1/4 - 1/3 of the kids had their laptop out. Now a lot of them were doing Facebook but, some of them were doing Math, etc. Apparently there is WiFi everywhere on campus these days. I ate in the upstairs dining part. That was pretty good. I didn't see any electrical outlets but it was definitely conducive to bringing a laptop.

The biggest shock for me (and why I'm adding this onto this thread) is that there were Corps members eating at Sbisa. I only saw one in the ACU uniform (a Zip of course), most of the rest were in Class Bs. There was a large Corps presence in Sbisa. I would say about 10%-15% of the dining patrons were in the Corps. This was shocking to me because in my era, we were not allowed to eat in Sbisa or The Commons. Only during Finals when Duncan was closed. That means that if I had an Engineering class at Zachary followed by a Math class at the Academic building let's say, instead of eating at Sbisa between classes, we would have to truck it back to Duncan, play all the Corps games and then get back off the quad to go to class. Now Corps members can eat lunch much more casually. I'd say that's probably a good thing because I know a lot of my buddies would pay out of pocket for their lunch or just skip lunch all together because they didn't want to hassle with getting on/off the quad for lunch.

It was shocking for me to see cadets eating in Sbisa but I think it's proabably a good thing overall.

In my day Duncan took the meals for lunch out of your meal plan at the beginning of the semester. You could get them back in your account if you had classes on the other side of campus, and it was not reasonable for you to walk to Duncan.

That being said, a lot of fish paid for meals twice to avoid the Quad and Corps games.

Cain had the best food in the day.... that is all.

Cadets are allowed eat lunch in any of the on-campus dining halls. Many still choose to eat in Duncan but it is great for them to be able to choose and to also eat near their classes preventing them from having to come back to the Quad for lunch. Duncan is also closed on Friday night all the way thru the weekend so they eat other places on campus for the weekends as well.

"Back in the day" I got a pass to eat dinner in Sibisa because of a 7pm lab. No way I could do formation, Duncan chow, etc. and make class.

While cadets should be at Duncan for formation and chow (except in cases like mine) , at lunch when there is no formation, they should be able to eat where they wish. Doesn't hurt to have cadets scattered among the non-regs so the civilian students can see they don't have horns.

"Really far back in the day" when my Dad '49 was there, they had morning, noon and evening formation anc chow. And they also had formation and chow Saturday morning and noon IIRC.

When I was a fish, I had a 1 hour gap between classes for lunch. I had to book it back from the Petroleum Engineering building to Duncan, whip out, greet, etc., on the quad, scarf down lunch in Duncan, and then get back heading to the Civil Engineering building with enough time to deal with the Corps games involved on the quad. My buddy and I often ended up sprinting back to the civil engineering building in order to make it to class on time.

It used to be Duncan was required for lunch M-W. Anyone who went to Duncan on Thursday or Friday noticed that food quality was better those days. And ever since they went to Duncan lunch optional every day, the food quality got much better (capitalism?). Initially Duncan was pretty sparse at lunch, but eventually the novelty of being able to go elsewhere for lunch wore off and cadets returned to Duncan for lunch at about normal numbers.

The Big Deal for us was the west side of Duncan putting in a sandwich line at noon.

I went to Duncan for lunch once as a fish. I never went back