The other day, I was at the most expensive coffee shop in Pennsylvania.
Besides prices such as $10.50 for a mocha, there is nothing particularly special about the place. The coffee is so-so, yet it does a booming business, owing to the fact that it maintains a monopoly on the market place.
The scheme works like this: The coffee shop operates in a municipality where a single company owns the rights to sell food. Residents of the municipality have no choice but patronize the company's businesses because as denizens of this strange town, they are forced to use a strange currency that is good no where else in the world, the Point.
The exchange rate is variable, and ranges from a low of $2.37 to a high $3.70 for 1 Point. In other words, prices are not what they appear to be -- to figure out the true cost, residents must multiply everything by an average of three.
The town is University Park and the company is the Penn State Office of Food Services.
It is common knowledge that all undergraduates who live in the dorms must buy a meal plan. As a relic of the past, the policy is a practical ideal -- there are no kitchens in the dorms, so Penn State provides dining commons to allay the concerns of parents and to promote a sense of community, according to the director of Food Services, Barry Scerbo.
But this is not my parents' Penn State, so does the policy still make sense for Generation Now?
Yes, it does make sense, but a $10.50 mocha never will.
The way I see it, Food Services is a heroic dinosaur in the eon of uber-capitalism, and the epoch of corporatization. But, unfortunately, it is not the pure cold-blooded beast it once was. This animal is a warm wishy-washy waste of evolution that thrives on over-priced double-lattes and soy milk cappuccinos.
It is the disposable Pepsi-product of environmental pressures to sell out the community: Sell the school to Nike, cries Graham Spanier; There is pure profit in soil, declares potential Circleville Farm developers; Students want brand-recognition, explains the director of Food Services.
Let's examine the fossil record. About 15 years ago, at the time Food Services switched to the points system, students could only use their points at the dining commons and the eateries in the HUB-Robeson Center were all-cash operations.
Many students ended up with a surplus of points at the end of the semester because they skipped meals. Eventually, Food Services got fed-up with issuing rebate checks. "[A] refund is expensive for me," explained Scerbo.
So they decided to give students the opportunity to get ripped off, and at the same time, cheat themselves out of their dorm community -- the HUB began accepting points.
Students can purchase food in the commons at a heavily discounted price, reflecting the students' investment in the "base cost" of running Food Services, which is paid at the time the plan is purchased. At the same time, the shops in the HUB are full-priced.
And so the most expensive coffee shop in Pennsylvania was born.
No matter how you look at it, if you have a meal plan, it never makes sense to use points to eat in the HUB. Financial considerations aside, the HUB is still a dining rip-off. It cannot and should not replace the experience of dining with neighbors, eating consistently and healthfully, using real plates and silverware, bending spoons out of shape, grabbing "hand fruit" to go, and flirting with the student who dishes out your mashed potatoes -- the one who actually has the time to flirt back, because the coffee is always self-serve, and there are no mochas to be made.
