The points problem: As the Senate prepares to announce a new restaurant on points, the Daily takes an investigative look at the MOPs system. This is the second of three articles.
Dining Services introduced the Merchants on Points (MOPs) program in the late 1990s as a way to increase late-night food options for students who wanted to eat after the dining halls closed.
At the time, this was a relatively innovative scheme. But since then, many competing universities have surpassed the Tufts model for offering off-campus dining options.
Harvard and Boston College, for example, added programs in the last few years that permit their students to use points at off-campus eateries. These newer programs act to expose a number of ways in which Tufts' MOPs system has become outdated.
For one, while Tufts students can use points at only six off-campus restaurants, Harvard gives its students access to 28 local eateries via the school's "Crimson Cash" program.
BC students, meanwhile, can now use their ID cards to purchase food from 12 off-campus locations, according to David Morrissette, a spokesperson for BC's Dining Services.
And unlike Tufts, whose older system still restricts students to ordering delivery with their points, BC and Harvard permit their students to use points for dine-in and carry-out options.
The time restrictions that Dining Services puts on Tufts' points system demonstrate another way in which Tufts' system proves archaic.
Harvard and BC allow their students to use points to buy food from sponsored restaurants at any time. But Tufts students can order with points only after 7 p.m. on weeknights and after 1 p.m. on weekends.
So why has MOPs not expanded to match the systems of other local universities?
In part, Dining Services still views MOPs primarily as a late-night replacement for its dining halls, not as a full-time competitor with on-campus food options.
Also, boosting the MOPs program has the potential to compromise Dining Services' economic well-being, according to the office's director, Patti Klos. [See part one of this series for details.] Harvard gets around this problem in part by requiring that virtually all students purchase unlimited meal plans.
But another, equally problematic issue stands in the way of expanding MOPs: Dining Services employees must sift through the receipts of every MOPs transaction completed by one of the affiliated restaurants, and must manually verify each slip.
This is because Tufts uses an old communication system, which many have called outdated and cumbersome, in order to keep track of MOPs transactions.
Because of this system, adding restaurants to points could result in significantly more manual work for Dining Services, something that Klos said she is not prepared to handle.
"It's quite a cumbersome process," she said. "We don't really have the resources to devote to [doing] more of that type of work."
Harvard does not run into this roadblock because its technology is newer, according to Crista Martin, the director of marketing and communications at Harvard's Dining Services. "It's an electronic processing system, so it is not by receipts," she said.
And Harvard is hardly alone.
Sal Airo-Farulla is the general manager of the local Boloco burrito restaurant, which recently applied to be on points and is awaiting the results of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate's survey. He said that many Boloco branches are on other universities' points systems, and that these schools normally use computerized communication systems.
"Most of our stores [work with] other universities, and essentially it's all computerized," he said. "I just found out recently ... that she has to count all those receipts manually. ... It almost doesn't make sense."
Tufts' system proves wearisome for restaurateurs as well as Dining Services employees.
Every time a customer uses points to order delivery, a restaurant employee must enter the student's number into a machine that communicates with Tufts' modem via a telephone line.
This ensures that the student has a valid account. The food deliverer must then take the receipt that the machine creates, have it signed by the student, and bring it back to the restaurant, where it must be filed until Dining Services comes to collect it.
Richard Warner owned the restaurant Urban Gourmet when it was on the MOPs system. He has since sold it, and now owns City Slicker Café, which does not take points. Warner said that having to account for every receipt one-by-one was too taxing.
"It created a lot of paperwork," he said. "Those points slips - you need to reconcile those every night."
Ismail Draou, the owner of Pasta Pisa/Café de Cr??pe, a restaurant that is currently on points, said that he often loses money because of misplaced or unsigned receipts.
"We have a lot of problems with signatures," he said. "Sometimes the drivers just want to get rid of [the food and forget to get signatures]. We get Tufts returning those slips to us."
Draou would like to see Tufts replace the modem with a high-speed Internet system.
Warner said that if Tufts had used high-speed connection, it would have solved many of the problems that caused him to abandon MOPs.
"Certainly, it would have eliminated some of the issues," he said. "It would definitely be a more streamlined process."
But Klos said that many restaurants would simply not be able to accommodate a high-speed connection.
"We still use a modem ... and that has more to do with the restaurants than with Tufts' capabilities," she said.
Still, Klos allowed that this assessment could be outdated. "Now as we're on the verge of 2008 that may have changed," she said.
Indeed, two of the restaurants currently on points already have high-speed Internet access, and one, Wing Works, told the Daily it would consider adding it if required to do so to be part of MOPs.
Other solutions would be to hire another Dining Services employee or have existing employees spend more time working with receipts. Klos said that both were impractical.
"[Counting the receipts is] split up among a couple of people and they do have other duties," she said. "To double that would add to their workload in a way that would compromise other responsibilities they have."
"But it wouldn't be enough [of a] workload ... so that I could justify adding another position," she continued. "Unlike a lot of departments, I don't have room for more people. I don't have physical space. It takes computers and offices, and all that. ... And so I'm a bit capped."
Still, students seem eager for change.
"They don't like their choices on points," said TCU Senate Services Committee Chair C.J. Mourning, a sophomore.
