NIAGARA UNIVERSITY, N.Y.-Here at Niagara University, there are several different ways in which you can spend your money. More specifically, there’s bookstore funds, campus funds, and gally gold. All of these can be used by just swiping your ID card. Now don’t get me wrong, having a lot of options is nice, but why not just condense it all into one if you can retrieve it from one place anyways?
With bookstore funds, you can open an account and put your money into the account to purchase things from the bookstore. I mean why not just pay in cash or with a debit/credit card if you want to buy something from the bookstore? Well with a bookstore account, you can receive a 5 percent discount with each item you purchase. But 5 percent isn’t a lot, like, at all.
With campus funds, you’re able to use your own money anywhere you choose to on campus. You get the 5 percent campus store discount when purchasing your books, but not the sales tax savings at the Gallagher Center. You can use the money from your campus funds at the Gallagher Center but you will also be taxed on whatever you purchase (found on niagara.edu).
With gally gold, you’re given $100 each semester to spend at different food places in the Gallagher Center. Having that is always nice if you’re looking for food on the go, but what if you don’t spend it all in a semester? Then it just expires and you can’t use it towards anything else. Personally, that’s an issue. With having the option of dining hall swipes and gally gold, more people may flock toward the dining hall. Mainly because you can eat however much you want. What if you want to be able to use your leftover gally gold money at the bookstore? Well you can’t. You can’t roll gally gold money over to other accounts. But why? As a student at Niagara, I think that is something that should be an option. Since I have dining hall swipes, I eat more there than I would in gally, so maybe I’d like to spend that gally gold money somewhere else.
If all of these funds are through the school ID card, then they should be combined into one account. There should be one account where you have gally gold, but this gally gold can be used anywhere on campus. If that $100 isn’t sufficient enough, then you should be able to load your own money on. It’s nice to have a lot of options, but maybe it’s time to just have one.
Niagara Wire 