prices suck at UMD

i haven't been home for a while. usually thats where i do my laundry because i don't feel like paying to clean my clothes. it just doesn't make sense that we have to pay to use the laudry machines. we don't pay for the utilities that we use in our rooms and bathrooms. think about it, if everyone just left all the lights and electronics in their rooms on, all day every day, and left the water running, and took hour long showers, we still wouldn't have to pay for it. that would be incredibly costly to the school. but people only do their laudry once in a while and it uses far less water and electricity than all or our other dorm activities. we should be charged for our personal utilities use in our own rooms before we are charged to do laundry. not that i think that we should be charged for either. its just ridiculous. 

this kind of adds on to my frustration with the food pricing on campus. in general, we get charged for every little thing that we do, whether it is laundry of food. we get charged 55 cents for putting cheese on a sandwich. honestly, who gives a shit. cheese is just an essential part of any sandwich, why do we get charged for it? they might as well charge for the lettuce too. i noticed one morning that a single tiny piece of sausage costed $1.50. this isn't the top of the line sausage either, its the crappy diner sausage made in bulk. i could get three bags of food from a vending machine for that price. whoever makes the pricing scheme here is really cheapa and  probably thinks that students will disregard the 55 cents, but over a semester that adds up, in addition to paying for takeout which costs 25 cents. and we don't even get a choice sometimes. getting takeout is mandatory during certain hours of the day. it also seems as though prices have gone up from last year. my friend who is in his second year here has verified this and said that last year, almost everyone was above the certain cutoff checkpoints that your meal plan goes by. this year almost everyone is below the cutoff. 

one more question. why are the prices of food still high? its understandable that the prices are high because gas prices are high, which cause the price of shipping to go up, etc. but the price of gas is approximately half of what it was and the end of august. why haven't the prices of our food gone down. the people running the dining services are inflating prices and disregarding national norms. all of my friends from other colleges say that they pay 6 bucks a meal and can get whatever they want, and as much as they want. here 6 bucks gets me one small meal, and leaves me hungry and dissatisfied after i have finished eating. this needs to change. not that im fat or anything but i don't get enough food. students shouldn't be left feeling hungry after a meal. the point of eating is to satisfy hunger, and if you can't do that then something isn't right