Further Comments and Analysis

Our Video:

The video begins with student interviews about the Eagle One Card. The stories of these two students are largely representative of what we found from our survey and our one-on-one interviews.

Based on all of the input we received, we depicted a series of real life situations where it is necessary to have one's Eagle One Card. It represents the difficulty experienced when a card is lost or destroyed, and shows the dependence of BC students on the Eagle One card.

The video stresses both the positives of having an Eagle One card and the negatives of losing the Eagle One card. The card offers us a great deal of convenience when we have it, but life becomes very difficult when we are without it. In our scenarios, often one person benefits while the other misses out.

Expanded Answers to Survey Questions:

"Do you usually have a balance on your meal plan by the end of the semester?"

Many students have significant balances at the end of a semester, especially female students. Fourteen students reported having $100-150 dollars left over; twenty-three reported having $200-300 dollars; eight reported having $400-500 dollars; four reported having $600-700 dollars; and one reported having over $700 dollars left over. These balances remained even after attempting to overspend and buy food for friends.

"Do you buy things you normally wouldn't buy with cash?"

Items students tend to buy when they are trying to spend their remaining balance include soda and snacks from vending machines, Late Night at the dining halls, frozen yogurt, ice cream, candy, and other junk food. BC seems to encourage this when they bring out carts and set up displays of costly candy and snack foods at the end of each semester. Students rationalize these purchases by thinking of dining bucks as "fake money." In an effort to prevent BC from taking the money remaining on the meal plans, many students will resort to making purchases they wouldn't normally make.


Suggestions for improving the study:

-The questions regarding the balance remaining at the end of a semester or school year did not apply to freshmen. They have not yet completed a semester at BC and do not know exactly how much their balance will be, although they may have given an estimate based on what they had left at this point in the semester.

-All questions were to be answered taking into account the full time the student was attending BC, unless noted otherwise. This may have not been clear to all the participants, and some may have answered the questions pertaining only to the current semester. This probably did not have a large effect on our results. Additionally, some students may not have had a meal plan for each year on campus, and some may have been off-campus at some point during their time at BC, so it may have not been clear how to answer some of the questions.