The university is overhauling meal plans next semester in an effort to continue its goal of creating a premier dining program. The new plan will offer meal plans by the day instead of by the individual meal.

Instead of operating on scheduled meal times, the Bean will be open from 7 a.m.-11 p.m., and students can enter and eat as many times as they want for the number of days the plan allows. However, students will only be able to use meal plans in the Bean and must use Bean Bucks in all other dining areas around campus.

Anthony Williams, chief business services officer, said ACU Food Services will offer just two plans to next semester’s underclassmen. Plan A will offer seven days a week of unlimited access to the Bean with $200 in Bean Bucks, and Plan B will offer five days a week (Monday-Friday) of unlimited Bean access with $400 in Bean Bucks. Both plans cost $2,300 per semester after taxes.

Upperclassmen also can choose plans offering $400 or $600 in Bean Bucks or 120 or 90 days of eating in the Bean per semester. With the 120-day plan, students will receive $275 in Bean Bucks for around $1,230, including tax, and with the 90-day plan, students will receive $500 in Bean Bucks for the same price.

All changes made to dining were determined by student input, Williams said – including the addition of an all-organic station in the Bean for the fall.

To prepare for the station, ACU Food Services is offering 10 students the chance to pilot the organic initiative for the rest of this semester in an effort to gauge enthusiasm for organic eating and to find out which dishes are most popular, said Zena Maggitti, director of ACU Food Services, during Friday’s interest meeting for students.

The program will provide students with 10 meals per week: five lunches and five dinners, Monday – Friday.

Wiepie Rojas, sophomore nursing major from Waxahachie, said she wrote a 5 to 8-page paper during Christmas break, detailing why she should not be required to pay for a meal plan for health and financial reasons. While she wasn’t able to ditch her meal plans altogether, she was approached by the university to discuss organic options – an initiative Maggitti said they already had been looking into.

While, Rojas said she doesn’t feel responsible for the changes, she does believe her efforts show ACU dining services that students are interested in eating organically.

“I think it was a matter of putting a little fire underneath them, showing them that there is a student interest and desire to change the way that we eat and that organic is becoming more important as we find more evidence that it’s a lot more beneficial to your health,” Rojas said.

She already has signed up for this semester’s pilot program. She said she looks forward to eating organically in the Bean and appreciates dining services for incorporating her beliefs about organic eating. Those beliefs, Rojas said, center around pesticide use, genetically modified food and treatment of animals.

“I think one of the things we forget is, as a Christian, we are called to filter what we watch and what we say and what we do,” Rojas said. “I don’t understand why we wouldn’t filter what we eat.”