Students who lost or had their original WildCARD missing were delayed in dining hall lines last week due to technical difficulties stemming from updates to Northwestern’s meal swipe system.

In order to remedy the issue, dining hall employees directed affected students to the WildCARD office to update their card, program manager Arthur Monge said. Monge said a couple hundred students arrived in the office since the start of Spring Quarter.

Following system updates, students who did not have the WildCARD originally issued to them when they started at NU needed to have their current card updated at the office, Monge said. Employees said they were notified of the system updates over Spring Break, but they were unaware they would cause these issues.

Northwestern dining services recognized the problem last Monday and has been coordinating with Residential Services and the WildCARD Office to fix the problem. In an effort to cater to affected students, dining service employees have been entering in student ID numbers of dysfunctional cards and redirecting students to the WildCARD Office for technical assistance.

“We don’t necessarily know why the problem came to be,” Sodexo marketing manager Jason Sophian said. “We are more so working with the University itself to try to identify how to fix it and how to make things run smoothly when it comes to on-campus dining.”

Monge added that when students went to dining halls to swipe their cards, some were misinformed their cards were defective and had faulty magnetized strips. He said this is the first time a problem of this nature has occurred since he started working at the WildCARD office 16 years ago.

“It’s really nobody’s fault it happened, but it’s a quick fix,” Monge said.

Medill sophomore Forrest Hanson said he went to the WildCARD office after his card did not work properly when attempting to use it in the dining hall. Hanson noted he had previously lost his card.

“It wasn’t too bad. It took a couple extra seconds in line,” Hanson said. “The employees, I could tell, were getting very annoyed with having to enter everyone’s information.”

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Twitter: @EdwardCox16