There are many issues that divide the Brandeis community right now, but here is something we can all agree upon: Dunkin should take meal exchanges. Dunkin is one of the best breakfast options on campus. They have lots of great food options, including muffins, donuts, munchkins and a delicious croissant sandwich. However, none of these great options are available as a meal exchange.
It’s true that they can be purchased with points, so you don’t need to spend your real money on them. However, points are precious—they don’t replenish until the end of the semester, as opposed to the end of each week. Plus, points are more valuable than meal exchanges because they’re necessary to buy overpriced snacks and Baja Blast from the C-Store. The things sold at Dunkin are often enough to be considered complete meals. A meal should be available with a meal exchange anywhere on campus, including Dunkin.
I personally don’t drink coffee, but I know a lot of Brandeis students are addicted to it. Currently, the only coffee available with a meal exchange is Einstein’s. Even as a non-coffee drinker, I know that Dunkin coffee is superior to Einstein’s coffee in every possible way. Also, Einstein’s can take almost 20 minutes to make your order, and nobody wants to wait that long for coffee. In my whole time at Brandeis, I have never seen a terribly long line at Dunkin. Accepting meal exchanges would allow Brandesians to get their coffee faster.
Dunkin also has breakfast options available all day, at least for the few hours when they are actually open. The dining halls stop serving breakfast at around ten every morning. My first class is at 11:15 a.m. To make it on time, I would have to get up around 10:30 a.m. If I want breakfast, I would have to get up much earlier, at around 9 a.m. Like many other college students, I tend to stay up as late as possible and wake up as late as possible. If I want breakfast, I have to sacrifice over an hour of sleep every morning.
I know that Einstein’s also serves breakfast food all day, and they accept meal exchanges. However, as I’ve mentioned before, the wait times at Einstein’s can be really long. It is also in a different part of campus than Dunkin. Coming from my dorm in North Quad, the walk to Einstein’s is twice as long as the walk to Dunkin. While most days I would be fine with a longer walk, I don’t want to make that trip in heavy rain (like the weather we had pretty much every weekend last semester) or in extreme cold. In weather like that, a shorter walk is much less miserable than a walk all the way across campus. While I do enjoy a lot of things from Einstein’s, mainly the Big Breakfast Burrito and Santa Fe egg sandwich, they are just simply not as good as some of the things sold at Dunkin. Sorry Einstein’s lovers, but it’s the truth.
If Dunkin decided to accept meal exchanges, it would benefit more than just the students: it would also benefit Dunkin. Since students hesitate to part with their points, while being eager to use all their meal exchanges before the end of the week, accepting meal exchanges would increase Dunkin sales significantly. Although you wouldn’t know this if you were to look at their hours, Dunkin’s goal is to make a profit. Increasing their sales by accepting meal exchanges would help them do that, while simultaneously making members of the Brandeis community very happy.
