Chartwells provided students an incentive to fill out surveys about their opinions of dining services by offering them a coupon for a free meal when they completed the survey.

The survey, which was released April 23, did not restrict the number of times students could print the coupons, and students quickly realized the opportunity to receive multiple free meals.

The abuse of the coupons was noticed by dining services staff, who said they saw the same students coming back with the coupon.

“Unfortunately, we had to take a loss, but we still wanted to get the information from students,” Beth Valle, marketing director for Chartwells, said. “It wasn’t enough of a problem or an issue for us to pull the survey sooner than the end date, considering that it was only running for a short period of time.”

Glen cashier Terrance Scott said he didn’t receive many coupons while he worked, but all of the cashiers had become aware of the coupon and were told the procedure of ringing in those students who did have them.

“There’s no way for me to tell if students had used more than one coupon,” he said. “But if they take the survey, they should be rewarded.”

Freshman Joe Zerafa found the survey was a good opportunity to give Chartwells feedback on dining and hopes they take it into consideration.

“I took it because I eat here and want to enjoy what I eat,” he said. “I live in West Village and I have been to Commons very rarely due to the quality of the food there declining.”

Sophomore Sydney Stultz said the survey is a great way to accomplish the goal of evaluating what the students think of on campus dining.

“They can know what people are thinking, and college students will always do it for a free meal,” she said.

Towson was one of the several schools in the area that have Chartwells accounts in the area to take the survey, but was chosen because of the size of the student population.

The survey was available on Facebook, the Towson dining services website, and was also communicated through the University Residence Government, Valle said.

Chartwells won’t receive the results of the survey until the end of this month.

“They’ll send it to us so we can kind of see what people are saying and then all that information goes into when we plan and enhance the dining programs and take the results and seeing what students would like to see,” she said.

Typically, Chartwells issues a survey every fall about dining services, but this is the first time they have ever done an in-depth evaluation survey, Valle said.