Editor’s Note: This article is the third part of a four-part series on residence hall life.

Iowa State’s dining services opened a new convenience store this fall, and a change in the meal plan system is in the works for the future.

For now, workers are needed in the residence dining halls.

“We’re always looking for additional workers,” said Stewart Burger, associate director of the Department of Residence. He said dining services will employ about 675 people this fall.

“We have openings for about 40 additional workers right now,” he said on Wednesday. “We’re still taking applications, and Maple and Oak halls are the best places to apply.”

Burger said dining services anticipates selling about 7,500 meal plans and serving about 2.75 million meals.

“We’ll spend just under $4 million on food,” he said.

Burger said the 20-meal plan is the most popular meal plan, followed by the 14-meal plan. But the meal plan system will be changing in the near future due to the Department of Residence’s Master Plan.

Randy Alexander, director of the Department of Residence, said the Master Plan definitely includes meal plans.

He said students do not like the current meal plan system, in which they have to pay for a certain amount of meals and do not get reimbursed for skipped meals.

“Students want more flexible hours. Your average student … doesn’t eat breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Alexander said. “They eat lunch, dinner and at midnight. And they want to be able to get pizza and use their dining card at 11 at night. Well, we can gear up to do that under a different system.”

Alexander said in the future, there will be a declining-balance meal plan where students can buy points, and what they eat will get deducted from their points.

One of the advantages of this system is that students will eventually be able to use their points in university convenience stores and possibly in the Memorial Union food court, he said.

Burger said a third convenience store, or C-Store, opened in Maple-Willow-Larch this fall. He said the existing C-Stores at Friley Hall and Towers Residence Association seemed quite popular with students last year, and the response to the new store has been positive so far.

“Customer traffic is probably the best indicator of success, and the numbers were higher [last year] than we anticipated,” Burger said. “We had as many as 1,000 students a day [making purchases at the C-Stores],” he said.

The idea of a flexible meal plan was well-received by some students.

“That would be so great-to be able to eat when you want and where you want,” said Cory Shmitz, sophomore in computer engineering. “It would cut down drastically on the extra food students purchase.”

“A flexible meal plan would be outstanding,” said David Douglas, sophomore in computer engineering. “A lot of students just don’t make it to food service. If they didn’t have to be buying pizza at midnight every night, they could save a lot of money.”