As of this semester, University of Massachusetts Dining Services will eliminate bulk YCMP sales, according to David Eichstaedt, director of Retail Dining Services.

Previously, these bulk sales had allowed students to use up leftover swipes to purchase cases of chips and soda at the end of the semester. According to Eichstaedt, UMass Dining Services promoted these sales by displaying cases of items that could be bought in bulk in the Campus Center for the past eight years.

Over this past summer, however, Eichstaedt and his colleagues, Executive Director of Auxiliary Enterprises Ken Toong and Director of Residential Dining Garett Distefano, decided to stop YCMP bulk sales beginning with the fall 2013 semester.

Many UMass students are unhappy with the policy change. Senior Alex Farmer said she thinks that the elimination of the bulk sales “is kind of stupid cause before we were getting ripped off anyways and now we are just getting ripped off, plain and simple.”

“I’m not very happy about that,” added junior Eric Hughes.

Eichstaedt said that while Dining Services understands the challenges that will be experienced by some students, there were several factors underlying the decision. One of the most important factors was that the bulk YCMP sales had “become too unmanageable in all aspects,” he said.

Eichstaedt said that the bulk sales had “created issues with campus police,” specifically with cars parked improperly near the Campus Center.

Also, Eichstaedt said that Dining Services received “complaints from customers that they were trying to use the Bluewall as a place to get a meal and the Bluewall was overrun with people trying to buy cases of [food].”

“[These complaints] started us down the path of bringing it to an end, it was just creating too many logistical problems on campus,” he said.

In addition to the complaints and the logistical difficulties, the bulk YCMP sales “didn’t go along well with our message with trying to be more healthful and sustainable and serve good food when were are going around selling cases of candy and cases of chips,” said Eichstaedt. “It just wasn’t the right thing to do.”

While this is the first semester that the bulk sales have been fully eliminated, UMass Dining Services began taking steps towards implementing this policy change last spring. Eichstaedt said that at the end of the spring semester, the bulk sales were moved out of the Campus Center and instead took place in the warehouse on Cold Storage Drive.  It was later decided that the bulk YCMP sales would be eliminated completely.

Eichstaedt said that in the end, “we wanted to have the meal plan be used the way it was intended, for students to eat their meals during the semester and not hoard swipes until the end of the semester and say, ‘I have 80 swipes and I need to spend seven hundred dollars in an hour.’”

Eichstaedt recognized that many students will have extra swipes at the end of the semester. In an attempt to reduce those challenges, he said that Dining Services has been “advertising throughout the semester that [they] are no longer doing bulk sales so that students are not in the situation were they get to the last day and have 50 swipes left.”

He added that YCMP swipes are viable options at on-campus food trucks as of a month ago. Other locations on campus at which YCMP swipes are accepted include the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, Roots Café and the University Club.

Nikoleta Nikova can be reached at [email protected].