The petition, created on change.org by sophomore Brian Francke, began as an assignment for a telecommunications course.
It has 116 signatures as of Sunday.
He said the assignment demonstrated how social media acts as an instigator of change.
The petition spread quickly, he said, reaching his set goal of 100 signatures in 12 hours.
Once the petition reaches the set amount of signatures, change.org automatically contacts the “decision makers” tagged by the ?creator.
Chris Gray, resident district manager of IMU Dining Services, was the only tagged source who ?responded.
He said the student voice surrounding this issue is influential to him and it should always have strength.
“I would never want the student voice to go away. I mean, they should have the voice on it — they’re the ones that buy it and use it,” Gray said.
Although the petition addresses the IMU Dining Services and RPS together, Director for Dining Services Sandra Fowler said they are separate entities.
“There’s actually three different food service departments on campus,” she said.
The Union, RPS and the athletic department each have their own dining ?services.
“The regular meal plan, (the) RPS meal plan, can’t be used at the IMU,” ?she said.
Gray said the IMU has pitched ideas about a collaborative, flexible meal plan to RPS several times, but none have taken off.
One such plan, U-BUCKS, was administered through IMU Dining and sold by RPS.
It was modeled by the I-BUCKS plan, Gray said, but was a separate meal plan accepted at the Union and Wells Library. The plan had to be bought alongside an RPS meal plan.
Gray said the plan was negotiated and finally offered to students in Fall 2011.
However, the plan ran into promotional issues.
“We had a lot of issues with the way it was being promoted,” Gray said.
The plan had to be ordered online through RPS, Gray said, and was often challenging to find on the website.
He said between 700 and 800 people were ultimately on the plan.
Gray said IMU Dining was asked to discontinue U-Bucks in spring of 2013 to make way for the Hoosier Bucks flexible plan initiated by RPS. The Union accepted U-Bucks until Dec. 31, 2014.
Hoosier Bucks was presented to IMU Dining as a simpler version of U-Bucks, where money could be put into a “flex cloud” and used anywhere on campus, ?Gray said.
However, Gray said, the plan had added stipulations for users and unforeseen fees for the IMU that made it look questionable.
The Hoosier Bucks plan was taken offline after two semesters, Gray said, and Hoosier Bucks could not be accepted past June 30, 2014.
“The bottom line is that I would like nothing more than a base, mid and top-tier meal plan to be offered that include a fair measure of flexibility for students to use in the IMU,” he said. “The plans must be simple to understand, simple to select and be offered with bursar billing to make it easier for parents to budget for.”
Executive Director of RPS Pat Connor made an official statement in an email regarding a combined ?meal plan.
“We understand that this is an issue that students care about,” Gray said in an email. “It’s an issue that we’ve tried to address in a number of ways over the years. It’s complicated by several constraints related to history and contracts, but we will put this on our agenda and are happy to think through options that will work for IUB students and all operational parties that would be involved.”
Gray said a combined plan should be possible and he hopes RPS would consider a flexible option as a value added.
“I want to protect their money but give people flexibility, too,” he said. “If they were able to add the value of a flexible option in there too, they would probably sell more plans.”
Although short-lived, Gray said he considered past versions of the flexible meal plan to be successful.
“The last couple of plans that have been in place, we’ve seen a lot of participation in them,” he said.
Fowler said past collaborative plans have not had enough success to balance out the administrative costs involved.
“There really hasn’t been the interest that one would think there might be the last two times that we’ve tried it,” Fowler said.
Although Francke said the petition has become less active in the past few days, he said he wants to continue his efforts.
