More students are munching on campus with meal plans this year.

Meal plan sales have increased 3 percent overall from last year.

The number of students with meal plans who are required to have them is 2,315, compared to 2,319 from last year, Dining Service Director Tim Colley said.

The number of students who voluntarily signed up for a meal plan this year is 3,558, compared to 3,367 from last year, Colley said.

Dining Services hasn’t done anything differently to promote meal plans this year than in previous years, Colley said.

He said he’s satisfied with the growth in meal plan sales, as it shows that more people are choosing to buy plans even after they’re required to.

More people are signed up for the 10-meals-a-week option than any other option, Colley said. This is typical because it’s the default option.

But the percentage of those with the 10-meals-a-week option has actually decreased over the past year, even though it still holds the highest numbers overall, Colley said.

A lot of people have switched from the 10-meals-a-week option to the option that includes 10 meals a week plus $150 meal plan dollars, which is the second option most frequently bought, Colley said.

He said he thinks the switch to the option with meal plan dollars has occurred because of the economy.

“Parents are budgeting and providing less cash resources,” Colley said.

Nia Bolick, a freshman from Hickory, N.C., has the 14-meals-a-week option as well as meal plan dollars.

Bolick said meal plan dollars are the best thing about meal plans, because she doesn’t have to use more than one meal swipe if she buys something extra or if she picks out something that doesn’t count as a meal plan.

She said she plans to buy meal plans in the future, even though she won’t have to, because she thinks it’s an easy way to get food on campus.

“You knew how much you could spend and it’s on your ID anyway,” Bolick said.

Bowling Green freshman Katherine Kirby has the 10-meals-a-week option and isn’t sure she’ll get meal plans next year.

“It’s like a love/hate relationship,” she said.

Kirby said meal plans are convenient because students don’t have to carry cash, but she never uses all of them each week, and she doesn’t like that some restaurants only have a few meal plan choices.

Next year, she’ll probably end up adopting the seven meals a week option and combining that with meal plan dollars or Big Red dollars, she said.