Hannah Master ‘23 is beginning to worry. It’s already April, and she still has $300 in Big Red Bucks left in her account. She nibbles on a Terrace burrito while internally debating whether she should grab coffee at Libe Cafe before her architecture class. In truth, she would rather have gotten her lunch and coffee at Temple of Zeus, but alas, they don’t accept BRBs. Master’s phone lights up — a text from a friend asking to get lunch at Collegetown Bagels. With a sigh, Master picks up her phone and taps out a response asking if the pair could meet up at Mac’s instead — Collegetown Bagels doesn’t take BRBs.
On its website, Cornell Dining pitches BRBs as a “tax-exempt … debit plan,” a convenient way to keep one’s food spending all in one place, all while saving money on sales tax! This pitch is deceptive, to say the least. All meal plans come with a $50 “administrative fee,” so if you buy $1,000 BRBs, you are actually paying a five percent tax on every purchase. Compare this to New York State’s sales tax rate of four percent, and you’ll quickly realize you are indeed paying sales tax — plus a little bit to Cornell on top of that.
To make matters worse, any BRBs that you fail to spend by the end of the academic year go directly back to Cornell, so BRB users often find themselves in Master’s dilemma come springtime — saddled with more BRBs than they can spend and facing the reality that their money will soon be deleted from…
