Eastern offers more than one option for food choices on campus, which also utilizes the Panther Card in multiple ways such as dining dollars and meal swipes.

The campus has three dining halls, each offering different types of food from Thomas Hall’s Italian, Taylor Hall’s chicken and Stevenson Hall’s deli sandwiches.

The dining halls are the main centers for getting grub around campus, but a food court located in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union includes even more options for students.

Meal swipes are used to eat the foods in the dining halls, which are based off of the current meal plan each student has signed up for, which ranges from seven, 12 and 15 a week. The card can be swiped in the halls once every two hours and resets at midnight every Sunday.

Dining dollars are the amount of money used in conjunction with meal plans and the smaller the meal plan, the more dining dollars given, which do not reset every week, but instead each semester.

The dining dollars can be used in different locations on-campus, including the University Food Court in the Union, the Panther Pantry and the Java Bean and Bakery.

Mark Hudson, the director of university housing and dining, said the idea behind the different amounts is if a student swipes less, he might spend more in dining dollars.

At the end of the semester, any unused dining dollars roll over to the next semester.

The panther card also has a feature called chip money, which is primarily used for laundry and some vending machines, said Hudson.

Mackenzie Freund can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]