ID card troubles eat into Dining

Technical glitches have allowed some students to receive free meals. Problems with the new PennCard system spread to the University's dining halls yesterday. Technical glitches allowed some students to eat without actually being on a meal plan, while others who were on meal plan were able to eat without having a meal deducted from their accounts. "We learned a little secret today," said one student who requested anonymity. "My understanding is that for this week, you can get in to any meal [by just flashing a PennCard]." Dining Services officials admitted that problems with the PennCards derailed the normal entrance system. In an attempt to adapt, officials started recording the names and PennCard numbers of all students entering the dining halls, so students couldn't enter twice for the same meal, and so officials can bill students who ate without being on a meal plan. "It's all true," Dining Services Marketing Coordinator Adam Sherr said of reported problems with the new cards. "It all depends on where you are at a given time [because] the system is still very quirky." He added that Dining Services' primary goal is to serve its customers and that "when the system goes down, we're not going to make people wait in line." Since the semester began, long backups have formed at dormitories and dining halls because of faulty new PennCards. Yesterday, the cards sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. College freshman Jordan Denfeld and College sophomore Miriam Joffe-Block -- who ate dinner last night at Stouffer Triangle and 1920 Commons respectively -- said they gave dining hall workers their PennCards, which passed successfully through card scanners. But the scanners couldn't properly read every card, and many students said they never had to prove that they were on a meal plan. Other students reported that the readers didn't deduct a meal from their weekly total when they entered -- so as far as the Dining Services computer system knew, they never ate the meal. "They swiped my card [at Stouffer] but it didn't tally up any meals," College sophomore Alison Watkins said. And College junior Chris Klock added that the scanner "just said 'pass' [and] didn't say how many meals we had." But Sherr explained that Dining Services removed the function that displays the number of remaining meals from its computers because it slowed the scanners' response time. Associate Vice President for Campus Services Larry Moneta blamed the additional features built into the new PennCards for preventing them from swiping cleanly. "We just all assumed -- and were led to believe -- that the new cards simply were prettier and more functional," he said, adding that "there was no warning that the system had flaws." And Sherr said he expects the PennCard problems to be fixed within the next few days, and stressed that the installation of a new computer to run the card scanner's server will help alleviate the problems by allowing the scanners to run more quickly.