All year, Quinnipiac University has long lines: to get Starbucks drinks, to get mail and to check out at the dining hall. This week, however, there were record-long lines outside of the university’s bookstore.
To help students use their meal points, the university’s dining advisory board announced last Sunday that students could spend their remaining balance at the bookstore. All students’ meal points must be used by May 7 as they will not roll over into the fall semester.
The university’s original email on Sunday said students would be able to use meal points in the bookstore from Monday, April 19 to Friday, April 22. However, based on the positive feedback, the university announced today that they extended the deadline to this Sunday, April 25. They also added an additional week from May 3 until May 7 for students to take advantage of this opportunity one last time.
While students can purchase most items in the bookstore, the offer is not valid for any online purchases or discounted items, in addition to new or used textbooks.
Shannen Tierney, a senior journalism major at Quinnipiac, had about $1,100.00 worth of meal points prior to the Sunday announcement with only two weeks of the semester left.
“Freshman year, I had a few hundred meal points that I left behind, which I thought was really unfair, but I am glad that the school is giving us more options this year,” Tierney said.
Quinnipiac made the decision to allow students to spend meal points for university apparel after the 2020 spring semester left students with extra meal points. The university also put out programs for bulk ordering, snack pack options and offered to allow students to donate the remainder of their meal points to the community to help end hunger.
Cheryl Cartier, the manager of the bookstore, said the students have wiped out a majority of the store’s inventory.
“We are a little low on inventory right now but we have orders coming in,” Cartier said. “And we have vendors and Under Armor and Champion printing stuff overnight, so we hope to have more stock in for Thursday and Friday.”
The line that showed up on Monday morning was surprising, she continued.
“Needless to say, I think we had 200 people in line by 8:30 in the morning,” Cartier said. “Of course we moved the line outside for COVID protocols and the students were fine with that.”
The bookstore manager said the bookstore took this offer as a one-time opportunity and does not know if this opportunity will be offered in future semesters. However, the sale helped accommodate for a loss of revenue from other sources.
“We really miss the big events,” Cartier said. “We haven’t had a parents’ weekend, and accepted students, open house tours were all canceled, so we are just thrilled to serve our students here on campus. It is definitely helping us make up from those lost sales.”
Tierney said she spent $900 in the last week at the bookstore.
“I got a lot of clothes, I got stuff to work out in, sweatshirts, just stuff that I usually think is overpriced that I wouldn’t normally buy because I don’t like to spend $50 on a pair of leggings or sweatpants,” she said.
Ben Walker, a junior marketing major, said he thinks it was an excellent idea on Quinnipiac’s part.
“I think that it’s a great incentive for Quinnipiac,” he said. “I think that if they didn’t do it, students would be really upset. Obviously I know a lot of students that don’t like the food, so they don’t want to have a lot of these meal points building up, so I think that Quinnipiac did a good job.”
Walker said he also tried the other options the university offered for spending excessive meal points.
“I did all the bulk ordering and I thought it was cool, because I could order stuff to my house, not even my dorm. I ordered it to my home and then, when it shows up to your house, it is about 200 bags of doritos,” he said, adding he knows there were parents unhappy with the amounts of food showing up at their doorstep.
The bulk orders and the bookstore accepting meal points are only a couple ways that Quinnipiac is trying to get students to use up the last of their meal points before the end of the semester. With the bookstore getting in shipments daily and extending the offer another week, students have the opportunity to empty their balances before they leave campus for the summer.
