If you are on a meal plan here, you know that discretionary prices are through the roof. While $8 for an acai bowl might sound like a decent price from your local smoothie place, it’s nearly criminal for a watery bowl of acai topped with poorly cut bananas and strawberries from Natural.
But this isn’t even the worst of it – the Falcon Mart feels like I’m being robbed. A pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream costs $5, a regular sized box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch costs $8, and a 12-pack of soda costs nearly $10. You would never experience these prices anywhere else, not even at a convenience store.
This shouldn’t be as a big of a deal as it is – I understand that prices will be more expensive on campus because of the costs to get things there, but the exchange rate between discretionary money and real money is 1:1. This means that if you wanted to buy a Natural acai bowl with cash, credit, or debit, it would still cost you $8. In other words, Bentley gives us hundreds of dollars of discretionary with our meal plans but in reality, this is a lot less money than it seems because the prices on campus are through the roof.
My main point here is that we should stop letting Bentley scam us out of our money with these Block 3-0-whatevers. Instead, maybe consider skipping out on the meal plan next semester (if you live in an apartment-style dorm or off-campus) and sticking to groceries instead.